Zeeplabor - The Mobile Police
by Dancou-Maryuu
Summary: [Patlabor fusion AU] In Zootopia, only small mammals can pilot the giant industrial robots known as 'Labors'. The advent of the ZPD Patrol Labor - or 'Zeeplabor' - has given Judy Hopps the opportunity to pursue her lifelong dream of joining the police. However, driving a giant robot isn't as glamorous as it seems, and the slacker fox assigned to back her up is NOT helping!
1. Fifty-One-Fifty - Parts I & II

**So yeah! This is a "fusion fic" between "Zootopia" and the anime franchise "Patlabor - the Mobile Police."**

 **I know that many Zootopia fans may not have seen (or even heard of) Patlabor (if you haven't, I highly recommend it), so I'm going to try and ease you into it the same way the Patlabor series did.**

 **This story may include notes with musical cues to describe the soundtrack of this fic - you may have noticed the list of background music and the "[OST1]" marker at the top of this chapter.**

 **One last note for reviewers: I welcome constructive criticism, but I appreciate it when you folks tell me what you enjoyed about my works. I'd like to be able to get to the point where the entire story is the best part, but in the meantime I'd like to focus on making the most engaging elements even better.**

 **Either way, enjoy!**

* * *

 **BACKGROUND MUSIC:**

1) Kenji Kawai – "Night Stalkers" – from _Patlabor: The Early Days_

2) Toshihiko Sahashi – "Procrastination" – from _The Big O_

* * *

 _[OST1]_

 **Labor: The name coined to describe giant robots built for heavy industrial use.**

* * *

 _"That Gideon Grey doesn't know what he's talking about!"_

 _"Well… He was right about one thing – I_ don't _know when to quit!"_

* * *

 **Their cramped cockpits mean that usually only small mammals can pilot them effectively.**

* * *

 _"Knock 'em dead, Nicky!"_

 _"You got it, Mom!"_

* * *

 **The advent of Labors sparked a revolution in construction and engineering, and opened up new opportunities for the small mammals piloting them.**

 **However, this breakthrough lead to a new threat to society; Labor crime.**

* * *

 _"Well, what'll you do with him now? The Old Guard's_ not _happy."_

 _"And I can't be seen to punish him or the media will throw a fit… Hang on. What if I stuck him with that new Zeeplabor Division?"_

 _"Kicking him upstairs?"_

 _"Call it what you will, but hopefully there he'll be out of our fur and_ in _Polecatsky's shadow, and we'll look like we're rewarding him to boot!"_

* * *

 **To address this threat, the Zootopia Police Department created a new type of Labor – the ZPD Patrol Labor.**

* * *

 _"Ms. Inaba?"_

 _"Yes?"_

 _"I thought I'd come and let you know before I gave the good news to your father. The AV-45 passed with flying colors!"_

 _"That's great! We'll need to see how the ZPD handles those first three units to be sure, but I've got a good feeling about this! Ooh! I can't_ wait _to see who they pick to pilot those bad boys!"_

* * *

 **Thus, the 'Zeeplabor' was born…**

* * *

 **Episode 1**

 **Fifty-One-Fifty**

 **Part I**

 **"Officer Judy Hopps – ZPD Special Vehicles, Second Section, Division 2, at your service!"**

Out on the stretch of the western coast of Savanna Central, the #88 bus trundled its way along otherwise deserted streets lined by industrial buildings behind chain link fences, and crisscrossed by quiet railway tracks. Here and there, it stopped to pick up or drop off the odd rhino, bear, or bull warehouse worker, but for the most part, it carried few passengers.

As the buildings began to thin out closer to the coasts, the bus ground to a halt. The rear doors opened, and the tiny, lithe, grey-furred form of a grey rabbit stepped onto curb.

As the bus pulled away behind her, Judy Hopps took in the quiet surroundings, the wind carrying a bit of sea air in her direction, before walking a little further down the street.

Judy then turned at the next right, towards the sea, as the industrial park thinned out even more before the road turned sharply to the left. Large fields now surrounded the buildings that had their backs to the sea. One of these warehouses – or at least, what _looked_ like a warehouse – interested her in particular, as she turned into its grounds.

The young rabbit's nose twitched as she thought about how out-of-the-way her new workplace was. But that didn't stop her from breaking into a dash as she passed through the open gate. She wasn't going to miss this for the world!

After speeding through the door, Judy's paws ground to a halt as an overweight cheetah, carrying in a box of doughnuts while humming the latest Gazelle hit, swung into view.

Judy uttered a short cry as she ground to a halt inches from the base of the big cat's tail, before losing her balance and falling on her fluffy tail. The stunned cheetah jumped forward and turned around, taking in Judy at last.

"Aw, geez!" The portly cheetah winced. "You okay?"

"I'm fine, I'm fine…" Judy hefted herself to her feet, looking at the cheetah's uniform, which was the same as hers: a navy vest overtop a paler blue shirt, with the words 'SV-2' in gold on the right-hand side, opposite a police badge. The gold letters signified that both mammals belonged to the ZPD's Special Vehicles Bureau, Second Section.

Obviously the cheetah wasn't a Labor pilot – even a skinny cheetah wouldn't fit in most Labor cockpits. Maybe he was there as a technician or something?

"Oh, are you with the new Division?" he said.

"You bet!" said Judy, puffing out her chest and putting her hands on her hips.

"You're here early," said the cheetah, smiling down at the comparatively tiny rabbit.

"Figured I ought to be," said Judy. "Say, where's Division 2 meeting again?"

"Oh, Ready Room 2," said the cheetah, pointing at the staircase to Judy's left. "Up there."

"Thanks!" Once again Judy was off like a shot, rocketing up the stairs, before realizing that she didn't know which of the rooms in the hallway was Ready Room 2.

Suddenly, a door opened, and once again, Judy flung herself to a halt, this time in front of a sleek spotted skunk donning a regular blue police uniform – _sans_ vest.

"Oh, sorry!" the skunk jolted back from Judy. "I didn't see you."

"Oh, it's my fault," said Judy. "I wasn't looking."

Just then, Judy saw 'POLECATSKY' on the gold nameplate on the uniform's breast, and her purple eyes went wide. "You're Anna Polecatsky, aren't you?"

The skunk tilted her head. "Yes…?"

"You… You _rock_! I'm a _big_ fan!" Judy reached forward and vigorously shook the skunk's paw. "I don't think I'd be here if it weren't for you!"

"Oh…" Polecatsky rubbed the back of her neck as she gingerly returned the handshake. "I… wasn't the _only_ first-generation Zeeplabor pilot."

"But they say you were the _best_!"

Anna Polecatsky's skill as a Zeeplabor pilot had led her rapidly rising through the ranks. Now, as a Captain of SV2 Division 1, she was the ZPD's highest-ranking mammal outside the Little Rodentia Borough Police who weighed less than sixty pounds.

"I… wouldn't really know what 'they' say…" Captain Polecatsky chuckled. "Anyway, you don't see my name in the tabloids, so I wouldn't call myself a celebrity. Are you part of the new Division 2?"

"Yes, ma'am!" Judy snapped into a salute. "Officer Judy Hopps – ZPD Special Vehicles, Second Section, Division 2, at your service!"

"Glad to have you onboard." The skunk smiled before pointing a claw at a door down the hall. "Ready Room 2's that door there. Good luck!"

"Thanks!"

'Good luck'?

Judy stepped through the open door of Ready Room 2 to find a room bare of furniture, save for a kitchenette on the far wall – one obviously sized for much larger mammals. A large window faced onto the field and Big Bayou Bay.

Judy's nose twitched as she wondered if Polecatsky had been pointing to a different room – Zeeplabor Divisions wouldn't spend their time on-duty between calls in an unfurnished room, right?

No. The lettering on the door said 'READY ROOM 2'. But that didn't explain the lack of furniture.

All Judy could do was sit down, cross-legged against the wall under the window, hoping the other Division 2 officers would shed some light on the matter.

About five or ten minutes later, Judy caught the first of her new co-workers coming into the room.

"Oho! And here I thought _I_ was the early bird!" he said.

It was obviously a male, wearing an SV2 uniform and wire-rimmed glasses, but Judy couldn't really tell what species this mammal was. The newcomer was squat, heavily built, and with thick, grey-brown fur. As he smiled, Judy caught the slightest sign of tusks under his lips. The new mammal's muzzle was also rather short, but pointed, with long black whiskers.

"Howard Hylander, at your service," said the new mammal, extending a padded paw Judy's way.

"Judy Hopps." Judy returned the handshake. "And that bit about us rabbits being quick on our feet isn't _all_ stereotype."

"Yes…" Hylander chuckled as he sat down next to Judy. "Pity there's no such endearing stereotypes for us hyraxes – it'd mean less existential crises!"

Judy chuckled, making a mental note to read up on hyraxes.

"Now, judging by that lilt in your accent, I'd say you're from the country…" Hylander stared long and hard at Judy. "Burrows County, I'm guessing?"

"Bunnyburrow to be exact," Judy smiled.

"Ah, I figured!" the hyrax pulled back. "Long way to travel, no?"

"Working in the police has been my dream since I was a kit," said Judy.

"Ah, I can relate…" sighed Hylander, staring at the ceiling. "I'd have joined the army if I'd had the chance. Alas, _this_ uniform will have to suffice." He placed his thumbs under his vest for emphasis."

"Uh… e-excuse me?" came a somewhat nasal voice.

Judy and Hylander looked to the door, where a short, bespectacled beaver in an SV2 uniform was peering into the room. "This _is_ where Division 2 is supposed to meet, right?"

"Far as we know," said Judy.

"Oh…" The beaver slowly waddled into the room, taking what looked like a popsicle stick out of his pocket. "I-I'm not late, am I?" he asked through grimaced buckteeth.

"No, not at all," said Hylander. "In fact, you're a little bit early."

"Oh, okay then…" the beaver sighed, placing one end of the popsicle stick in his mouth and beginning to chew on it as he walked up to Judy and Hylander, extending a shaky, webbed hand to Judy. "Uh, I'm Earl Beaverbrook."

"Judy Hopps," Judy shook the beaver's paw.

"Howard Hylander," said Hylander, doing the same soon after, eyes glancing to the clock hanging above the door. "Is that clock right?"

Beaverbrook glanced to his wristwatch. "I… think so?"

"Hmmm," Hylander's brow furrowed. "You'd think we'd see more of the other officers in the Division by now…"

"You think so, eh?" said Beaverbrook.

"From what I was told, there'd be two active Labors," said Hylander. "That means two Forwards, two backups, and two carrier drivers. That makes for six. We are three."

"Four, actually." Everyone turned up to see the portly cheetah from downstairs lumber into the room, still tucking the box of donuts under his arm, a warm smile on his overstuffed cheeks. "I'm Benjamin Clawhauser. I'm gonna be with you guys, too."

"Oh, I saw you by the door," said Beaverbrook. "I thought you were with Division 1."

"Oh, I used to be," said Clawhauser. "I only just got transferred here. I've been earmarked for carrier duty."

"That still leaves two of us unaccounted for," said Hylander.

"I've met our new Captain," said Clawhauser. "He said one of us won't be here for a week or so. Some unfinished business at their last post, he says."

"That just leaves one MIA," huffed Hylander. "Where could he be? It's almost time for roll!"

"Not 'almost', officer." The room turned to the door.

In walked a massive Cape buffalo, built like a football player. A haggard frown was etched onto his face, and a wad of papers was tucked under his arm.

Clawhauser was the first to salute the newcomer. The others soon joined him after noticing the Captain's badge on the buffalo's blue uniform, opposite the gold nameplate with the word 'BOGO' on it.

"At ease," huffed Captain Bogo, taking a pair of half-moon glasses out of his pocket and leafing through the papers. "Now, you all saw my name on your transfer papers, I betting, so I'm not going to bother introducing myself. Besides which, I don't care."

Judy, Hylander, and Beaverbrook glanced from one to the other of them at that last remark before turning to Clawhauser, who just shrugged.

"Now, you may or may not be aware of this," Bogo continued. "But since one of us has yet to be formally transferred, we will have an incomplete complement of officers for our first week or so." A scowl soon worked its way across Bogo's face. "However, I _have_ noticed that there is another one of us who has yet to put in an appearance-"

" _I'm here!"_ came a voice behind the bull.

Everyone looked down to see a lanky, russet-furred, green-eyed fox with a brown-tipped tail and an SV2 uniform make a mad dash into the Ready Room.

" _Phew_!" The fox skidded to a halt in the center of the room in front of Bogo, an odious smirk forming on his muzzle. "Meeting start yet?"

Bogo sneered down at the fox. "Officer Nicholas Wilde, I presume?"

* * *

 **Part II**

 **"'Personal Problems' is right…"**

"I would appreciate it if you showed up on time in future," growled Bogo, glaring down at the fox.

"Sorry, Cap'n," said the fox, smirk not budging. "You know what traffic in this city is like."

"Wilde, the point of your coming on duty so early was to avoid morning rush hour," said Bogo.

Wilde just shrugged and walked over to the other officers, slouching against the wall beside Beaverbrook, who edged away, his flat tail knocking briefly against the wall behind him.

"We'll discuss your tardiness later," said Bogo, pointedly adjusting his glasses before turning back to his papers. "Now as I was saying, there were supposed to be seven of us in total, but until our final member arrives, us six will have to make do, so I'll be filling in myself.

"Now, also missing at the moment are our actual Labors. Headquarters, in its wisdom, has given us three – and I quote – 'not-quite-prototype' AV-45 Ingrowl patrol Labors from Inaba Heavy Industries. Right now they're still being checked over, and won't arrive until tomorrow night at earliest."

Judy's nose twitched. Prototypes?

Bogo continued. "Now you should know that these three units may be rough around the edges. That's because Headquarters – in exchange for a reduced price tag – has agreed to let Inaba look at how we use them so they can use what they find to help develop newer Zeeplabors down the road.

"Now one of the new machines, Unit 3, will be kept in storage here as a relief Labor for emergencies and for spare parts. Units 1 and 2 will be our 'active' units.

"Now with that out of the way," Bogo regarded his five officers. "Here are your positions in the Division. To begin with; Labor Unit 1, Forward: Officer Judy Hopps."

Judy resisted the urge to do a fist-pump. 'Forward' was the name for a Zeeplabor pilot.

"Unit 1, Backup: Officer Nicholas Wilde."

Zeeplabor Backups drove the armored 'Command Cars' that accompanied each unit, providing information to the Forward and covering their blind spots. Judy looked over to Wilde, who glanced at her briefly before returning to studying the ceiling.

Judy raised an eyebrow. Her parents had always told her to be careful of foxes. Now she was going to _work_ with one. _Watch it, Judy. You're making assumptions already. Like you told Mom and Dad, Gideon Grey wasn't a jerk fox; he was a jerk that happened to be a fox. Besides, Wilde's a cop. He wouldn't be wearing that badge if he didn't want to help mammals, right?_

Still, fox or not, something about Wilde made Judy uneasy…

"Unit 1, Carrier: Officer Benjamin Clawhauser."

The chubby-cheeked cheetah gave a friendly wave down at Judy and Wilde. Judy smiled and nodded back. Clawhauser she could deal with, from what little she'd seen of him.

"Labor Unit 2: Officer Howard Hylander."

"Sir!" barked the hyrax, saluting.

Judy wasn't sure what to make of Hylander to be honest. Something about his exuberance unnerved her.

Bogo finished by looking down at Beaverbrook. "Now, Officer Earl Beaverbrook, originally you were to be Unit 2's carrier driver, but until our seventh member gets here, you'll act as its Backup as well, but I may step in if necessary."

"Y-yes, sir…" murmured Beaverbrook.

Judy didn't envy the beaver, having to pull double-duty.

"Now that that's settled, any questions?" said Bogo, lowering his papers.

Hylander raised his hand. "Uh, sir? What are we supposed to do until the new Labors arrive?"

Bogo took off his glasses, and pointed them at the wall beside the door. "Well, why don't you sit at your desk and we'll discuss it?"

Hylander and the others glanced at the wall. "Captain, there's no desk there."

"Exactly."

* * *

After much toting of heavy furniture boxes and much kvetching about ITREEA instructions, the newly assembled officers of SV2 Division 2 had put equipped their new Ready Room with desks, a microwave, a fridge, and an antiquated TV set.

The desks had adjustable heights, so obviously Clawhauser's would tower above the others', and adjustable or not, they were obviously sized for large animals, so other than Clawhauser, the officers would have more desk space than they'd ever need.

However, the kitchenette was big-cat-scaled. Only Clawhauser could reach the fridge handle or the counter. Beaverbrook soon found a solution to the fridge problem by tying a rope to the handle.

The counter was another problem. Beaverbrook suggested a rope ladder, but Wilde pointed out that it'd be useless when carrying food in both hands.

This time, Clawhauser had a brain wave. He took a filing cabinet and put it beside the counter. Then, he moved Wilde's desk beside the filing cabinet, put Judy's slightly shorter desk next to Wilde's, then put two big-cat-sized plastic storage boxes in front of Judy's desk – one on top of the other – followed by a third in front of the first two, and a fourth on Wilde's desk next to the filing cabinet

"Ta-da!" the cheetah proclaimed after duct-taping the boxes in place. "Instant staircase!"

Sure enough, it was now possible for someone to progress from plastic boxes to Judy's desk to Wilde's desk to filing cabinet to counter while safely carrying objects in both hands. The desks' immense surface area meant that both Judy and Wilde had ample space left over for their co-workers to walk over their desks.

"So… _now_ what are we going to do?" asked Beaverbrook.

* * *

"This work… is not fit… for a policemammal!" grunted Hylander as he used his scythe to hack through the thick weeds surrounding the SV2 building. "If I wanted agricultural work, I'd have gone to the Burrows!" Hylander turned to Judy. "No offense."

Judy just focused on her own section of weeds. Weeding felt more palatable than toting and assembling furniture, but she sympathized with Hylander.

So Judy found herself taking her aggressions on the weeds, using her scythe to hack through weeds closer and closer to the sea, until she arrived at the concrete seawall that separated the field from Big Bayou Bay.

The view of the Bay was great, but more concerning to Judy was the sight of Nick Wilde reclining in a collapsible lawn chair, a pair of Wayfarer sunglasses on his face and a fishing pole dangling over the seawall.

 _[OST2]_

"What are you doing?!" Judy demanded, her foot beginning to stamp.

Wilde just smirked. "What's it look like I'm doing?"

"You're supposed to be helping us weed," growled Judy.

"Well, I _am_ helping," said Nick. "Captain Bogo said to 'keep busy doing something or other that benefits the unit.' You prey mammals are set, what with the mechanics' garden, but the nearest grocery store's a fifty-minute roundtrip away, and there is _no_ way that henhouse the mechanics built can supply enough protein and vitamins for all the predators here."

"So you're just wasting time fishing 'for the good of the unit'?!" Judy's foot-stamping grew more rapid.

"Pretty much," said Nick, smirk growing more repugnant. "Not _my_ fault the fish aren't biting, Carrots."

"You'll want to refrain from calling me 'Carrots'," Judy seethed.

"My bad," said Nick. "Just assumed you came from some carrot-choke podunk."

"I'm from Bunnyburrow," said Judy, puffing out her chest. "Podunk's in Deerebrook County."

"Ah, my mistake," said Nick, not an ounce of understanding in his voice. "Still, can't hold any of this against me, _Carrots_."

"We'll see what Captain Bogo has to say about that!" huffed Judy, turning back towards the building.

Judy's ears then perked at the sound of whizzing, followed by a cry of alarm and a splash.

When she turned around, Judy saw that the lawn chair was on its side and Wilde was nowhere to be found. Dashing to the edge of the seawall, Judy found the fox in the water, wayfarers missing, staring in complete befuddlement at the enormous fish in his arms.

As Wilde clambered up the riprap, fish writhing in his arms Judy couldn't help but imitate his smirk. "Actually, I may have been wrong about you," she quipped. "It's nice to see you _take a dive_ for the team."

Wilde just furrowed his brow and sauntered back into the weeds.

Judy glanced at his drenched tail. "Nice bass, by the way!"

* * *

Anna Polecatsky wasn't usually one for _schadenfreude_ , but she couldn't resist a chuckle when she looked out her office window and saw Nick Wilde sauntering towards the building with a sulky look in his eye and an oversized sea bass in his arms.

"Your crew are certainly keeping busy," she turned to Captain Bogo, sitting in the desk facing hers.

"Hmmm…" Bogo didn't look up from the promotional pamphlet singing the virtues of the AV-45.

"Okay, what is it, Adrian?" Polecatsky had to be one of the few mammals Captain Bogo respected enough to let her use his first name.

"I said from the start this was making me nervous," Bogo growled, setting the pamphlet down. "First Swinton moves me out here so fast I barely get time to clean out my desk, then I'm told my Division's effectively going to be bunch of test canaries for Inaba, then I get charged with some of the greenest recruits to come out of the Academy."

Polecatsky shrugged. "In fairness, we were pretty green ourselves when we first started out. Remember, there weren't _any_ Zeeplabors before I got sent out here. We were pretty much writing the books as we went. And that wasn't that long ago either. With the reorg giving us a whole new Division, it's not surprising you get rookies."

"It's not just experience I'm worried about," said Bogo, staring at the ceiling. "Beaverbrook's a nervous wreck, Hopps and Hylander are arrogant, and Wilde's a slacker. I'm only hoping our sixth member evens things out."

Polecatsky propped her elbows on her desk, careful to avoid falling off the cushion situated atop her wolf-scaled swivel chair. "No mention of Clawhauser?"

"I was actually meaning to ask you what _your_ take on him was," said Bogo, pushing the pamphlet aside. "He did used to work under you."

The spotted skunk grinned. "It's funny you should ask that, because I actually recommended he be transferred to your Division."

Bogo sat up and stared at Polecatsky. "Why?"

"Bureau Chief Buckminster told me he was going to edge out Clawhauser so he could put Spike McTachy in my Division," said Polecatsky. "I'd heard rumors that your mammals would be selected 'irrespective of personal problems,' so I recommended to Buckminster that he send you Clawhauser to fill out the numbers."

"'Personal problems' is right…" snorted Bogo. "But why send Clawhauser my way?"

"Well, Buckminster may not realize it," said Polecatsky, reaching around to stroke her long-haired tail. "But I think Clawhauser's at least part of the reason why there aren't any 'personal problems' in Division 1…"

* * *

"That little fox caught this?" said Joanna Namakoro, one of SV2's resident mechanics, gazing at the impressive filleted fish on the folding table in front of her.

"More like _it_ caught _him_ ," said Judy, in between bites of corn-on-the-cob.

Lunch breaks at SV2 were crowded affairs thanks to all the mechanics having to eat, so long folding tables packed with food seemed to sprout out of nowhere and vanish once lunch break was done. Anyone who didn't know any better would think that the suddenness of the lunch break's beginning and end was an act of prestidigitation by the mechanics who volunteered to move the tables in and out.

Joanna took a bite of the fish, savoring it a bit before gulping it down her muzzle. "Us mechanics have been saving up to buy a boat to go out fishing. Maybe we should take 'im with us?"

"You thinking of using him as bait?" chuckled Judy.

Judy and Joanna had been getting along well since Judy had come to ask her about the Ingrowls. The burly spotted hyena hadn't known much about its functions, but she'd gushed for hours about leaked information about the Labor's OS. Judy hadn't understood half of it, but she had to admit, it made her all the more eager to pilot the machine herself.

"Never thought I'd see a fox in uniform," said Joanna, looking at the end of the long table, where Wilde was nonchalantly eating a sandwich by himself. "Then again, I could say the same about bunnies. Hell, my Mom says she'd never have imagined that I'd be working with the police when she was my age – even as a mechanic."

"Hyenas have that bad a reputation?" said Judy. "It's just that I never saw any in Bunnyburrow, so I wouldn't know much about them."

"Eh," Joanna ran her hand through her long mane. "Lots of other preds say us yeens are nothin' but lowdown scavengers. 'Course, most preds are technically scavenging just by eating Bugaburga, and it's not like other mammals didn't do it back in the day."

"Oh…" Judy stared at her now-stripped cob.

"Anyway, I can sympathize with the fox," said Joanna. "And our chief's species gets a lot of flak too, but she does her job and she does it well."

"Swinton?" said Judy.

"Not Swinton." Joanna talked in a hushed voice as she gestured upward. " _Her_."

Judy stared upward and saw an aged bat hanging upside-down from the building's rafters. A pair of dark aviators' sunglasses covered her eyes. Judy had seen the bat twice before, always hanging from the same beam. Judy wondered if the bat was somehow sleeping up there despite the hive of activity underneath her.

"Who is she?" said Judy.

"Lucy Camazotz, our Chief Mechanic," said Joanna.

" _She_ 's the Chief Mechanic?!" said Judy. "How can she sleep on the job?!"

"That's just it," whispered Joanna. "You never know if she's sleeping or not! Us mechanics pretty much play it safe and pretend she's awake. If you're smart, you'll do the same!"

Judy glanced at the bat again before turning back to Joanna. "You're not scared of her, are you?"

"Me? Scared of the Chief?! Only down to my toes!"

* * *

The next day passed uneventfully, save more menial tasks for Division 2. Judy bitterly noted the many ways 'Slick Nick' Wilde had managed to dodge work. But Judy's attention was more on the Ingrowls and wondering when they'd actually arrive.

Then, near the evening, as rain clouds began to roll in from Zootopia Sound, Beaverbrook ambled into the Ready Room, panting.

"Th-they're here!"

Beaverbrook then had to dodge the grey-furred bullet that sped out through the door.

When Judy got to the hangar, the three machines were laid out in their carrier trucks, but Judy could see into the carriers' payload bays from the short balcony that extended from the office section into the hangar.

Unlike most police Labors before it, the AV-45 Ingrowl had a different chassis from industrial Labors. This allowed it to have a thinner, lither form. But even so, its torso was compact and its thighs were thin, and its calves flared out to help lower the machine's centre of gravity. A set of 'bull bars' jutted out over its chest for extra cockpit protection. Lightbars atop the machines' shoulders signified their status as emergency vehicles.

The machines were all painted black on the chests and shoulders, but the heads were white. The forearms and legs, and the shields mounted on each machine's left arm were white with black 'zebra-stripes'.

A green-tinted Plexiglas visor and a mouthplate with a generic muzzle covered the face, an ear-like fin jutting from the head's left-hand side, a set of antennae from the right.

Police badges were painted on the Ingrowls' right shoulders. On the left shoulders were numbers; 221, 222, and 223. These numbers signified that they were ZPD Special Vehicles _Second_ Section, Division _2_ , Labor Units 1, 2, and 3. In addition to the numbers, each unit could be identified by their different head shapes. Compared to Unit 1, Unit 2 had a much larger visor that made the head look like a cross between a football player's helmet and a motorcycle helmet. Unit 3's visor in contrast, was much slimmer, with a bulbous forehead that contained Unit 3's exclusive Electronic Counter-Measures (ECM) Pod for anti-electronic warfare.

Judy heard footsteps, turned around, and saw Joanna walking up to her, reverently taking off her white mechanic's cap and holding it to her chest.

"Figured you'd be here," the hyena chuckled. "I've been lookin' over the OS. God, if I could _marry_ that string of ones and zeroes, I would!"

Judy smiled and stared at Unit 1 – soon to be her machine.

Joanna gave Judy a toothy grin before joining her in eyeing Unit 1. "Eager to take 'em for a spin?"

"Frith yeah…" Judy muttered.

Just then, alarm bells began to ring all throughout the building.

 _"Now hear this! Now hear this!"_ came a voice over the PA system. _"We have reports of a rogue Labor in Savanna Central. Division 2 is to scramble immediately."_

Joanna's jaw dropped as she turned back to Judy. "Someone up there must either like ya, or hate your _guts_!"

* * *

Character Name Explanations

Anna Polecatsky \- Spotted skunk ( _Spilogale putorius_ ) - Spotted skunks are also known as "polecats" in some regions.

Howard Hylander \- Rock hyrax ( _Procavia capensis_ )

Earl Beaverbrook \- North American beaver ( _Castor canadensis_ ) - His name is also a reference to Anglo-Canadian press baron and politician Max Aitken, aka. Lord Beaverbrook.

Spike McTachy \- Short-Beaked Echidna ( _Tachyglossus aculeatus_ ) - His genus name should give you some idea why I named him that.

Joanna Namakoro \- Spotted hyena ( _Crocuta crocuta_ ) - "Namakoro" is the Malinke word for her species.

Lucy Camazotz \- Spectral bat ( _Vampyrum spectrum_ ) - Camazotz is a bat god from Mayan mythology. Plus, I thought it'd be humorous to name a bat "Lucy" (a name that means 'light').

* * *

 **So yeah! Thanks for jumping onboard this story!**


	2. Fifty-One-Fifty - Part III

**BACKGROUND MUSIC:**

1) Micheal Giacchino – "Ticket to Write" – from _Zootopia_

2) Kenji Kawai – "UPROAR" – from _Mobile Suit Gundam 00_

3) Kenji Kawai – "Inrush" ("Totsunyuu") – from _Patlabor: The Movie_

4) Kenji Kawai – "Showdown" ("Taiketsu") – from _Patlabor: The Mobile Police_ TV series

* * *

 **Fifty-One-Fifty**

 **Part III - "Just let me do my job, okay?!"**

"Marvelous – bloody marvelous," growled Captain Bogo.

His Division hadn't even gotten a good look at their new machines, and _naturally_ this Crabmammal had gone on a rampage when Division 1 was out on another call.

In one hoof, Bogo bundled up the lanyards he'd just received and made for the hangar, where mechanics of many species were dashing around in a panic.

"Lucy!" Bogo called up to the rafters. "These things operable?"

From the rafters, Lucy Camazotz fluttered down, perching herself atop the cab of one of the labor-carriers in front of Bogo. "Theoretically, yes," she growled. "At least according to Joanna. _Joanna!_ "

"Yes'm!" Joanna Namakoro seemed to come out of nowhere, standing to attention in front of her superior.

"You say we can field these beasts?" said Camazotz, a hard look oozing from beneath her sunglasses.

"Uh, yeah," Joanna gestured to the lanyards in Captain Bogo's hoof. "Those key drives should hold enough data to stand up on their own two paws, but well… they'd be like babies, really."

"Babies?" said Bogo.

"Well, yeah," said Joanna. "The Ingrowl's OS is meant to emulate an actual mammal's moves. The more use it gets, the more data it acquires. It's basically like the pilot's teaching them how to move."

"Just give me a straight answer," growled Bogo, wheeling on the hyena. "Can I send them out there? Could they feasibly take down a rogue Labor? Like a Crabmammal?"

"Well, the starting data's based off of older Zeeplabor data, so theoretically…" Joanna gave an awkward, toothy grin. "…yes?"

"Good enough for me," huffed Bogo, who then turned to where his Division was lined up against the side of Unit 2's Labor-Carrier.

Hopps and Hylander already had their crash helmets tucked under their arms. Beaverbrook was donning a navy blue ZPD baseball cap. Wilde held a similar cap in his hand.

"Alright, you lot," said Bogo. "I won't mince words. This is _not_ ideal."

Beaverbrook and Clawhauser shivered. Hopps was shivering as well, but in excitement.

"But the fact is, we've got our Labors," Bogo nodded up to Unit 2 laying down in its carrier. "…and we're the only ones here. You all know your assignments?"

Division 2 nodded, with varying degrees of enthusiasm and anxiety.

"Very well." Bogo raised the bundle of lanyards, tossing one each to Hopps, Hylander, Wilde, and Beaverbrook. "These lanyards hold the key drives for your Labors. Forwards and Backups will wear one for their respective units at all times. A third drive for each unit will be kept here at the station. At the end of each deployment, you'll hand these back to the mechanics so they can back your data up. They're essentially the brains of your machines so _don't lose them_. Any questions?"

Beaverbrook raised a quivering paw. "Wh-what will I do, sir?"

"You'll help me initialize Unit 2's command car," said Bogo. "But you'll be driving the carrier there while I take the command car. We'll swap again at the scene." Bogo tensed as he imagined trying to fit his massive frame in the comparatively tiny armored command car that accompanied each Ingrowl. "Any more questions?"

No response.

"Then there's no point in delaying this any further," continued Bogo. "Hopps, Hylander, get into your Labors and begin initializing them. Wilde, Beaverbrook, do the same for your command cars. We've no time to lose. _Go!_ "

* * *

Judy and Hylander promptly donned their crash helmets and made for their respective units' carriers, clambering atop them and into the Ingrowls' cockpits.

No sooner had Judy opened Unit 1's cockpit up than she took in a whiff of its 'new car smell.' She had to resist giggling like a schoolgirl as she took the plastic wrapping off of her new pilots' seat.

This done, Judy took the her lanyard off, took the key drive – the colloquialism for the USB sticks that contained a Labor's movement data – and plugged it into a socket in the console in front of her before booting up the Ingrowl's internal computer systems.

On the lower front screen, Judy was soon greeted with the initials "I.H.I." with bunny ears sprouting from the _H_. Underneath this logo were the words "INABA HEAVY INDUSTRIES," with a loading bar underneath.

As the system finished booting, the screens to either side of Judy flickered on to show the interior of the carrier's payload bay, with the main screen in front of her showing the hangar ceiling.

 _"You booted up already?"_ Wilde's voice rang through her comms system.

"I can hear you, so I _guess_!" huffed Judy.

 _"Well, hurry up and initialize that thing,"_ grumbled Wilde. _"Beaverbrook's done already!"_

"What?!"

* * *

After much bickering and panicking (how the hell had Beaverbrook finished so fast anyway?!), Judy was seated in the cab of Unit 1's carrier next to Clawhauser as Division 2 finally made its way out of the converted warehouse. Wilde's car had pulled out in front of them, with Unit 2's carrier and command car out in front of the impromptu convoy (somehow Bogo had managed to fit his massive frame into the command car).

The massive carrier's cab was built for larger mammals, so the only thing Judy could see was the closed door of the glove compartment in front of her. It was a rainy night, so the sound of windshield wipers punctuated the hum of the truck's engine.

"You sure you're gonna be okay out there?" said Clawhauser, glancing down at his passenger.

"I'll be fine," said Judy. "I've been waiting this day my whole life."

"You wanted to be a Zeeplabor pilot?" said Clawhauser.

"Not originally," said Judy. "I wanted to be a police officer _period_ , but they wouldn't take me. Then someone suggested I get a Labor license and some experience first, so I did that, reapplied to the Academy, and sure enough, I got in!"

 _"So what are we up against, Captain?"_ said Hylander through the carrier's radio.

 _"An Inaba Crabmammal,"_ said Bogo.

 _"Yikes… Heavyweight division,"_ said Wilde.

 _"Pilot's been ranting about how the Sanitation Department forced him into early retirement without his pension,"_ continued Bogo. _"He stole the Crabmammal from a construction site and is threatening to wreck the city unless Mayor Lionheart personally gives him his pension back. Only thing is, he's already trashed three city blocks and he says he's been holding back."_

 _"So, you're saying he's nuts, Cap'n?"_ said Wilde.

 _"The technical term is fifty-one-fifty, Wilde,"_ said Bogo. _"Anyway, here's the plan; barricades are already being set up to encourage the suspect to go down Zambezi Street. Unit 2 will deck-up at Zambezi and Acacia Way to intercept them. This done, Unit 1 will deck-up behind him at Zambezi and Kalahari Road to cut off his escape route. Then Hopps and Hylander will try to encourage him into Zambezi Street Park. It's already been evacuated."_

No surprise there, Judy thought. The Police Academy's special course for Zeeplabor pilots advised cadets to coax conflicts away from populated areas and into wide-open spaces like parks, golf courses, or even graveyards.

Eventually, the two carriers and their respective command cars split, taking different routes to their intended deck-up points.

However, a new report came in from Dispatch. _"Dispatch to Division 2. Suspect has broken through a barricade and turned east onto Okavango Road. He's just passed Baobab Street and is proceeding eastward."_

"Aw, nuts!" moaned Clawhauser.

 _"New plan,"_ barked Captain Bogo. _"Unit 2, intercept at Okavango Road and Tarangire Avenue. Unit 1, deck-up at Okavango and Empire Avenue and back us up."_

 _"Well, this just keeps getting better,"_ grumbled Wilde.

* * *

 _[OST1]_

Eventually, Unit 1's carrier and command car made it to the corner of Okavango Road and Empire Avenue. The street was still being evacuated, with uniformed ZPD officers milling about, shooing away rubberneckers.

As Judy leapt out of the carrier's cab into the rain-soaked street, she heard a rhinoceros officer mutter something to his wolf colleague.

"I swear, someone up there's playin' a joke on us," the rhino grumbled, gesturing to Judy and the carrier with the Labor inside. "Making something that small the only thing that can drive something that big!"

Judy just chuckled to herself as she climbed up the ladder at the side of the trailer, and hoisted herself into Unit 1's cockpit. Once in, she donned her crash helmet, inserted her key drive into its socket, and booted up the OS.

Inside the cab, Clawhauser pulled a lever, causing legs to extend out of the giant truck to stabilize it.

"Okay, I'm buckled in and booted up," said Judy through her radio.

"Alright," said Clawhauser, taking in a deep breath as he pulled another lever. "Let's be careful out there."

A set of hydraulics soon extended from the carrier's back, pushing its payload bay upward and back like the skip of a dump truck until it reached a 90-degree angle, revealing the Ingrowl inside to the stunned crowd.

Once the deck-up procedure was complete, the clamps holding Unit 1 in place were released, and the machine took its first steps into action.

* * *

 _[OST2]_

The TFV-44 Crabmammal speeding down Okavango Road was a bulky, olive-colored machine with a cylindrical body atop four insect-like legs. Each leg featured retractable wheels, enabling it to either drive (as it was now) or walk.

"You seein' this, Lionheart?!" the elderly raccoon inside yelled. "Shoulda just given me my pension!"

The Crabmammal then raised one of its legs before bringing it down on the roof of a parked car, flattening it. "See that?! How 'bout this?!" The stolen Labor then moved to the other side of the street, where it kicked up one of its legs to smash in a shop window.

Soon, it turned around to regard the lither form of Unit 2 approaching it.

"This is the ZPD!" said Hylander through his Ingrowl's own speakers. "Power down your Labor and come out with your hands up!"

"See?! Lookit that!" snarled the raccoon. "That's a new model! That's my pension money right there! Goes to show ya the city cares more about Labors than actual mammals!"

"Much as I'd love to talk politics…" said Hylander, putting Unit 2 into a fighting stance. "…you've destroyed public and private property, and you're guilty of Labor theft, too!"

"Destruction of property?!" said the raccoon, as the Crabmammal flipped another car onto its back. "I'm holdin' back!"

"Strange individual, aren't we?" muttered Hylander, as his machine withdrew a collapsible rod from under its shield. This was an electromagnetic baton, or 'stun stick.' The stun stick was designed to be thrust into a Labor's sensitive areas, like its computer banks or batteries, and deliver a disabling short-range electromagnetic pulse.

"Ya wanna go then?!" roared the raccoon, sending his machine full throttle towards Unit 2.

Hylander hadn't expected an early charge, so he gave up on delivering a killing blow to dodge the renegade Labor, leaping out of the way and sending the back of his machine into the wall of a department store. The Crabmammal, whose pilot hadn't expected such a speedy dodge, skittered into the side of a building on the other side of the street.

A safe distance away, behind his command car, Captain Bogo groaned. The city was going to have his tail for this… Beside him, Beaverbrook began gnawing on another popsicle stick.

Hylander tried to get his Ingrowl to stand up, but the Crabmammal had recovered faster, pulling itself free of the building and motoring over to Unit 2. Before Hylander could react, the enemy Labor began pounding its leg into his machine's back again and again, forcing him to drop his stun stick.

The raccoon laughed as he made the Crabmammal kick the prostrate Unit 2 into a storefront, causing the façade of the building to collapse down on top of it. With its visible interior, the building now resembled a dollhouse. "Y'see that, Lionheart?! My pension would'a been a better investment!"

"Fifty-one-fifty…" Bogo groaned.

The Crabmammal let up on its punishment of Unit 2 as Unit 1 pulled up a short distance away, drawing its own stun-stick.

"Give it up!" Judy's voice came through the Ingrowl's loudspeakers. "You're not getting away with this!"

"No! Not until I get my pension back!" The Crabmammal sent its leg into the second floor of the building next to Unit 2, causing more rubble to fall on top of it.

"Ta think I was cleanin' up messes like this for half my life!" said the raccoon. "Now you tell Mayor Lyin'-heart that if he don't give me my pension _right this second_ , I'm gonna be _makin'_ messes instead!"

"Hey, hey hey!" Suddenly Unit 1's command car came rocketing out beside Judy's machine, stopping between it and the Crabmammal before Nick Wilde poked his head out of the hatch, clutching the receiver for his vehicle's loudspeakers. "Let's not get hasty, gramps. Is it _really_ worth getting this steamed over?"

"Wilde, what in blazes do you think you're doing?!" Bogo roared into his car's receiver.

"I'm an old codger!" yelled the raccoon. "I probably ain't got much longer anyway!"

"Come on," said Wilde. "I mean, you got any family?"

"No!"

"I mean, you say you've been keeping the city clean half your life, right?" Wilde continued, propping his head on his elbow. "Are you _really_ gonna tear all that work down? I mean, look at this! Look at it!" The fox gestured to the crumbled department store façade. "Who's gonna clean this up?"

"Not me! They pushed me out, remember?!" said the raccoon. "Besides, I hated workin' sanitation! It was the only job a 'coon like me could get back then! They said garbage n' theiverin' was all we were good for!"

"Ouch…" muttered Wilde, unaware that his loudspeakers were still on.

Judy winced as she remembered how some species stereotypes had been informally enforced in Zootopia. Still, she had no idea mammals like this raccoon were still around.

"I waited _so fuzzin' long_ for my retirement!" growled the raccoon. "Now they tell me I ain't getting' nothin' for all the work I did cleanin' other mammals' messes?!"

 _[OST3]_

The Crabmammal advanced on Wilde's command car, raising a leg as if to crush it. Wilde quickly ducked back into the car and reversed it before the leg could come down on top of him.

Judy then rushed the rampaging Labor, but the raccoon was too fast, giving Unit 1 a kick that sent the Ingrowl on its back, causing it to drop its stun stick. The Crabmammal then raised a leg, ready to smash it into Unit 1 like it had with Unit 2. This time however, Judy was fast enough to grab the leg, and swing the Crabmammal into the building nearby.

"Hopps!" growled Bogo, rubbing his hoof against his head. Buckminster and the city were going to roast them _all_ on a spit!

"Carrots!" groaned Wilde. "We're trying to stop this guy from wrecking the city, not save him the trouble!"

Judy clenched her buckteeth. "Just let me do my job, okay?!"

Both the Ingrowl and the Crabmammal recovered quickly, the latter charging the former with its leg-wheels lowered. This time, Judy bent Unit 1 over, planting its feet into the ground as she held out her machine's hands to grab the Crabmammal as it slammed into her, lifting its front legs off the ground. This put more weight on the Crabmammals rear wheels, which smoked and squealed as they began to burn rubber.

"Come on, come _on_ …!" Judy growled, as though she were physically holding back the ten-tonne rogue Labor herself. "Just _break_ already!"

"Give it up, Carrots!" said Wilde through Unit 1's comms systems. "The Crabmammal's a heavyweight; you can't beat it in a shoving match!"

"Don't…!" Judy planted Unit 1's right foot deeper into the ground, causing the asphalt underneath it to crack.

"…call…!" The Ingrowl's grip on the Crabmammal's front legs tightened

"…me…!" Unit 1 raised its left leg, slamming its knee into the belly of the Crabmammal, very briefly lifting its right hind leg off the ground.

"…CARROTS!" Unit 1 twisted around and released its hold on the Crabmammal, sending it skittering across the street and into the building on the other side of the road.

"Yikes…" muttered Wilde, grimacing.

Bogo just slammed his head into the roof of his command car. Now the buffalo was worrying about _his_ pension.

The Crabmamal got back to its feet, but now thick smoke was emanating from its hind legs, indicating it had pushed its motors too hard. The two Labors began to circle one another, as if sizing each other up.

"Well, you've got guts if nothing else!" grumbled the raccoon.

"Oh, I've got _plenty_ else!" said Judy, pushing a pedal in her cockpit, causing a compartment on Unit 1's calf to open up, revealing an Ingrowl-sized handgun.

Wilde's ears slid back. "Oh no…"

"Unit 1," Bogo said into his receiver. "Permission granted to use the revolver cannon."

"What?!" Wilde sputtered into his own receiver. "At this range?! She could hit the pilot – or wreck the place even more!"

"This situation's getting out of hand. We need to end this quickly," said Bogo. "And we're not getting anywhere at close-quarters. Unit 1, fire at will."

"Copy that!" said Judy, as a metal visor slid over its green Plexiglas visor. Its hand then extended on an armature, grasped the handgun, then extended back.

"Hey, what gives?!" Panic entered the old raccoon's voice. "You can't shoot that here!"

 _[OST4]_

"Wanna bet?!" snarled Judy, raising the gun in Unit 1's hands and pointing it directly at the Crabmammal.

A silence fell over Okavango Road, punctuated only by the sound of falling rain.

The two Labors just stood facing one another, both poised for action.

In Unit 1's carrier's cab, Clawhauser began praying softly, not knowing he was religious until just then.

By Unit 2's command car, Beaverbrook accidentally swallowed a fifth of a popsicle stick.

Beside him, Bogo muttered something into his receiver.

In Unit 1's command car, Wilde's eyes grew to the size of dinner plates as his teeth clenched.

In the Crabmammal's cockpit, the raccoon panted heavily as his paws tightened on the controls.

In Unit 1's cockpit, Judy's gritted her teeth as she locked on target.

The Crabmammal raised a leg…

Judy's finger tensed on the 'FIRE' button…

* * *

No species/names to explain here, but I got a bit creative with street names in this chapter. Zambezi Street is a reference to the Zambezi River. Kalahari Road refers to the Kalahari Desert. Okavango Road refers to the Okavango inland delta. Tarangire Avenue refers to the Tarangire River.


	3. Fifty-One-Fifty - Part IV

**BACKGROUND MUSIC:**

1) Micheal Giacchino – "Walk and Stalk" – from _Zootopia_

2) Micheal Giacchino – "Not a Real Cop" – from _Zootopia_

PV) Kenji Kawai – "Scramble" – from _Patlabor: The Mobile Police_ TV series

* * *

 **Fifty-One-Fifty**

 **Part IV - "Sly fox, dumb bunny"**

 ** _CRASH!_**

The Crabmammal slumped to the ground as smoke began to erupt from its abdomen, legs splayed out in all directions as Unit 2 drove its stun stick deeper into the rogue Labor's hindquarters.

In one swift motion, the sludge-covered Ingrowl had shaken the debris off of it and lunged at the Crabmammal. Now it placed its hand on the top of the machine's body, forcing it down to the ground.

Wilde sighed, slumping into the seat of his command car. "Dammit, Captain…"

"Good work, Hylander," said Bogo into his receiver, as Beaverbrook fainted beside him.

"Thank you sir," panted Hylander. "I guess there's a stereotype in the making about us hyraxes playing possum."

The raccoon pilot clambered out of his totaled machine's cockpit, and began jumping up and down, cussing at Unit 2 until a tiger and a bison in ZPD uniforms climbed onto the wrecked Crabmammal and cuffed him.

Inside Unit 1, Judy also slumped back in relief, a bit miffed that Hylander had gotten the 'kill', but still, that had been the most terrifying experience of her life!

And yet…

It had been amazing! Thrilling! It had been…

* * *

"…Destruction of property, insubordination, and just plain stupid, reckless behavior!" snarled Captain Bogo, pacing up and down the line of assembled Division 2 Officers in the Captain's office at the warehouse. "Bureau Chief Buckminster's having a fit, Okavango Road's property values are going to be down for the foreseeable future, and hashtag-'PsychoLabors' is now trending on Chitter! If it weren't for the fact that we now _technically_ have a 100% incident resolution rate, this Division's career would be over before it began!"

Clawhauser gulped. Beaverbrook shivered. Hylander was stone-still.

Wilde snorted, with a glare at Judy. "It probably would've been worse if you'd let Dirty Hare-y here get off a shot."

Judy returned the glare.

"I knew that, Wilde," said Bogo. "And I also knew that would not be a problem."

"Why not?"

"When our Labors arrived, it was believed we would have the chance to test our weapons out properly to get a feel for them before any actual deployments," said Bogo. "Which is why your guns tonight were loaded with blanks."

"What?!"

"And a good thing, too!" snapped Bogo. "This isn't _Panda-Z_ or _Dangatoh_ or whatever brain-dead giant robot cartoon they're showing these days where you can tread all over the city without a care in the world for collateral damage!"

"You'll have to clarify, sir. I haven't seen either of-"

" _Shut your tiny mouth now, Hopps!_ " barked Bogo. "The point is, whenever you so much as take a step in one of those things, you could potentially put mammals' lives at risk. In a city this big, there are many such mammals, and in a city this literate, there's a good chance those mammals have lawyers.

"This entire Section," Bogo raised his arm. "Has been criticized to hell and back as a waste of taxpayers' money; you heard what that raccoon was saying! We needed a first impression like _this_ …" Bogo pointed to his phone, which featured social media going agog about #PsychoLabors. "…like we needed a hole in the head!"

Bogo walked over to the window, taking in the view across Big Bayou Bay. "I expect a full report of this disaster from each of you on my desk by 0930 tomorrow, as well as the _understanding_ …" Bogo threw a sneer over his shoulder at his subordinates. "…that this sort of thing _won't_ happen again. _Is that clear?!_ "

"Yes, sir…" everyone droned.

"Dismissed," Bogo huffed.

One by one, the mammals of Division 2 filed out of the Captain's office. Clawhauser was last. As he passed out the door, he found himself face to face with a great, erupting plume of long, black-and-white fur. Instinctively, the cheetah flattened himself against the door frame as he edged his way out.

Bogo groaned as he sat back in his chair before noting the plume of fur make its way into the office.

"I'm guessing I'm not the only one that had a rough night?" he remarked to the plume, which came down as the gaunt torso of Captain Anna Polecatsky came up. Bogo respected the skunk as a cop, but he didn't think he'd ever get used to her bizarre habit of doing handstands when frustrated or annoyed.

"At least your Division had something to do," huffed Polecatsky as she hoisted herself into her chair. "We were dealing with a DWI in an Ushii Bullfrog. By the time we got there, the drunk had gotten himself stuck in a canal. Most of our 'deployment was essentially pulling the Bullfrog out of the water so the idiot didn't drown!"

Bogo snorted. "At least your team isn't a social media sensation."

Polcatsky sighed. "We were too, at first. Your mammals are young. They'll get over it."

Bogo swiveled his chair, staring out the window again. "One can hope…"

* * *

 _[OST1]_

"Dirty Hare-y?!" snapped Judy Hopps, as she followed Nick Wilde on the way to the bus stop.

"Tell me, what part of pulling a 37-millimeter handgun in a densely packed neighborhood couldn't be called reckless?" said Wilde, that obnoxious, half-lidded smirk etched across his face.

"Really now?!" huffed Judy. "How about putting your command car in front of a ten-ton Labor driven by a crazy raccoon?!"

Wilde rolled his eyes. "Well, _excuse me_ , Carrots, for trying to deescalate the situation from becoming exactly what Captain Buffalo-butt wanted to avoid."

"You're gonna want to refrain from calling me 'Carrots,' 'Slick Nick,'" Judy seethed.

"Alright, tell me if this sounds familiar," said Wilde, throwing a glance at Judy over his shoulder. "Naïve little hick with good grades and big ideas decides 'hey look at me, I'm gonna drive a Labor in _Zootopia_ where predators and prey live in harmony and sing 'Kumbaya',' only to find…"

Wilde turned around and began walking backwards so he could face Judy. " _Whoopsie!_ We _don't_ all get along. And that dream of becoming a bigshot Labor cop? _Double whoopsie!_ " Wilde turned back around. "She's stuck in a scapegoat Division with a bunch of other misfits, and _– whoopsie number threesie_ – all she's good for is breaking things."

By this point, they were almost at the bus stop.

Wilde went on. "Soon enough, those dreams die – probably when someone _else_ does – and our bunny sinks into emotional and literal squalor and she finds herself living in a box under a bridge, until she has no choice but to go back home with that cute, fuzzy-wuzzy little tail between her legs to become – you're from Bunnyburrow, right?" Wilde gave Judy a pointed look. "So how 'bout a carrot farmer? Does that sound right?"

Judy stood there, jaw hanging open, as Wilde continued on his way. Finally, Judy had had enough.

"Hey!" she dashed in front of Nick. "A slacker like you has no right to tell me what I can or can't be!"

"Okay, let me put it this way," said Wilde, bending down in what Judy thought had to be _the_ most patronizing way possible. "Everyone comes to Zootopia thinking they can be anything they want – but they can't. You can only be what you _are_." He got up, then gestured between himself and Judy. "Sly fox. Dumb bunny."

"Well, what's a 'sly fox' doing as a cop then?!" Judy growled.

"Little mistake on my part," said Wilde, clasping his hands behind his head. "Only a matter of time before someone realizes what a mistake it was letting a shifty lowlife like me on the force. Doesn't mean I can't help them along though."

Judy gaped. "You mean to tell me you're trying to get yourself fired?!"

"Mmm-hmm," Wilde nodded, still smirking. "So what's that say about _you_ when you're doing a worse job than someone who's _trying_ to do a bad job? Like I said – sly fox, dumb bunny."

"I am _not_ a dumb bunny," said Judy, voice white-hot with rage.

"Right," said Wilde. "And that is _not_ your bus."

Judy turned around to see the #88 bus pulling away.

"You'll never be a real cop."

Judy turned around to see Wilde clambering into a hocked-up old van with a mural on the side showing a pair of foxes in a passionate embrace.

"Keep up the Labor-work though," Wilde quipped from the passenger-side window as the van passed her. "Maybe I.H.I. could use a new crash-test dummy. Hang in there!"

With that Parthian shot, Judy was left waiting for the next bus.

* * *

"Thanks for coming to pick me up, Finnick," said Nick, after giving the bunny a sarcastic salute.

"Meh," grunted the diminutive fennec in the driver's seat. "Had trouble wit' the directions. Zoogle Maps still says th' place belongs to Lanolin Textiles. Could your new gig _be_ any more out of the way?!"

"Don't get too used to it," said Nick. "Like I said, I don't have high expectations for this job."

"Saw ya on the news earlier," said Finnick, whose voice was jarringly deep for a mammal his size. "Sounds like they got ya workin' wit' some real nutjobs."

" _Oh_ yeah…" chuckled Nick. "You see the Labor that pulled a gun?"

"Yeah?"

"That was its pilot we passed just now."

"Ho-ly fuzz!" Finnick cackled. "And after what you said! You better be careful 'case she 'accidentally' steps on ya with that Labor 'a hers!"

"Relax," said Nick. "If all goes well, she won't have to put up with me for long."

 _[OST2]_

Finnick was quiet for a bit. "Hey Nick, you ever think y'r actually onto somethin' here?"

"I don't want to talk about it," said Nick, languidly staring out the passenger-side window.

"I mean, y' ever wonder if Esther had the right idea about-"

"I _don't_ want to talk about it!" Nick glared at the fennec.

Finnick took the cue and shut his muzzle. Nick wasn't usually the angry type, but bring that vixen into things…!

* * *

Not only had Judy gotten an extra late bus home, but microwave dinner had somehow been even more dismal than usual, all the music on the radio was demoralizing, her bickering neighbors were at it again, and now she found that news reports of her scuffle with the Crabmammal had made it all the way to Bunnyburrow.

"Mom, Dad, it's okay!" Judy urged into her phone's MuzzleTime app. "The building fell on Unit _2_. I was in Unit _1_. Hylander was in that one, and he's fine. Those Ingrowls can take a lot of punishment without hurting the pilot."

 _"I'm sorry, honey!"_ said shorter-eared Bonnie Hopps. " _We're just worried about you is all. I mean, what if that Labor hadn't stopped?"_

"Don't worry, Mom!" said Judy. "I had the upper hand. I had the gun, remember?" Best not mention that said gun was loaded with blanks. "It was a piece of cake!"

 _"You sure, honey? I mean… What kind of Labor was that?"_ Stu Hopps' whiskers twitched as he rubbed his chin. _"Not a Pickle. It was newer than that…"_

"A Crabmammal, Dad," said Judy. "Inaba makes them too. But the Ingrowl's from Inaba, and it's newer. It's real cutting-edge. Those Labor criminals won't know what hit 'em!"

Stu laughed, but it was a forced laugh – Judy could tell. _"Okay, Jude-the-Dude. Just… Be careful out there, okay? And take good care of that Labor of yours. It's the only thing keeping you safe out there!"_

Judy chuckled. "'Take good care of your tools and they take good care of you,' right, Dad?"

 _"Yep!"_ Stu puffed out his chest. _"Just like me and Charlie!"_

"Well, you needn't worry about that, Dad," said Judy. "We've got like a billion mechanics out at SV2 to take care of our Labors. They're trained pros."

 _"Alright, but all the same, check things over for yourself once in a while,"_ said Stu. _"You're gonna be the one piloting that thing out there!"_

"Dad, it's fine," said Judy. "Unit 1's got a thick hide, and I'm not alone out there."

 _"Okay, honey…"_ said Bonnie. _"On that note, what are your co-workers like?"_

"Well, Hylander – the guy in Unit 2 – he's uh… well-read… and nice…" and full of hot air. Stupid hyrax wouldn't stop crowing about getting the drop on the Crabmammal after they got back.

 _"Oh yeah, didn't you say they had someone covering your back?"_ said Stu. _"A backup, was it?"_

"Oh, my backup? Wilde, he's…"

Arrogant? Apathetic? Callous? Shifty? A fox? Better not mention that last one. "He's alright."

 _"Well, he'd better take good care of you,"_ said Bonnie. _"And you'd better listen to him, sweetheart. He's the one you need to trust in situations like that."_

Trust Wilde?

Yeah.

Right.

"Don't worry. I know he's got my back!"

 _"Well, just take good care of yourself, dear!"_ said Bonnie.

 _"Yeah, we're rootin' for ya!"_ said Stu.

Judy smiled. "Thanks, Dad! That means a lot!"

 _"Bye, sweetheart!"_

 _"Bye sweetie! Take good care out there!"_

"Bye!" Judy ended the chat, then slumped in her chair.

That had been her first deployment. She should be feeling great about it. Why wasn't she?!

"HEY BUNNY, TURN DOWN THAT DEPRESSING MUSIC!" came the voice of one of her neighbors (was it Bucky or Pronk Oryx-Antlerson?).

Judy hurriedly switched off her radio alarm clock. How had she not noticed that sad piano music it was playing?!

"LEAVE THE BUNNY ALONE? DIDN'T YOU HEAR HER CONVERSATION?! SHE'S DISSAPPOINTED!"

"OH SHUT UP!"

" _YOU_ SHUT UP!"

" _YOU_ SHUT UP!"

" _YOU_ SHUT UP!"

"Tomorrow's a new day…" Judy muttered to herself.

"YEAH, BUT IT MIGHT BE WORSE!" said an Oryx-Antlerson.

* * *

"Tomorrow's a new day…" Bogo grumbled as he looked over the beginnings of his report.

"Oh, don't be like that," said Polecatsky, typing up her own report. "It might be better!"

* * *

"Tomorrow's a new day…" Nick stared at the ceiling of Finnick's van.

"Eh, what can ya do?" said Finnick, passing him a can of beer. "Cheers!"

The two foxes bumped their cans together before taking a sip.

* * *

 **THIS IS AN AU, BUT IN TEN YEARS, WHO KNOWS…?**

 _[OST-PV]_

 **NEXT TIME ON** ** _ZEEPLABOR_** **:**

 **Nick:** "Well, here she comes! Division 2's last member!"

 **Judy:** "Virginia Lee Foxape? Who's she?"

 **Nick:** "Hang on, she isn't a fox _or_ an ape! What's up with that?!"

 **Judy:** " _What_ is this she's saying about me and my piloting ability?! It's perfectly _fine_ , thank you very much!"

 **Nick:** "Well, I'm inclined to agree with her, as is half of Okavango Road!"

 **Judy:** "Why, you…!"

 **Clawhauser:** "Come on, you guys! Captain Bogo doesn't like it when you fight!"

 **Judy:** "Well, maybe if _someone_ stopped being such a slacker…!"

 **Nick:** "Well, maybe if _someone_ stopped being so smash'y…!"

 **Clawhauser:** "Come _on_ , you guys! Your jobs might be on the line here!"

 **Nick:** "On the next _Zeeplabor_ – 'Robin of Foxley'!"

 **Judy:** " _Target: locked on!_ "

* * *

LABOR FILES:

AV-45 Ingrowl

Model Number: AV-45 (Advanced Vehicle - Model 45)

Code name: Ingrowl

Use: Law enforcement anti-Labor patrol Labor

Manufacturer: Inaba Heavy Industries

Operator: Zootopia Police Department - Special Vehicles, Second Section, Division 2

Height: 8.02 meters

Width: 4.37 meters

Weight: 6.0 metric tons (6.62 metric tons when fully equipped)

Armour: Fiber-reinforced plastic & carbon-fibre reinforced material

Maximum lifting capacity: 2.4 metric tons.

Armaments and equipment:

Fixed:  
\- 37mm revolver cannon stored in a compartment in the right calf (loads 6 rounds, hand-carried) or37mm tranquilizer pellet gun stored in right calf compartment (loads 4 rounds, hand-carried)  
\- Anti-labor stun stick stored under a shield mounted on the left forearm (hand-carried)  
\- Head-mounted Electronic Counter-Measures (ECM) pod (Unit 3 only)  
\- Winch and cable mounted on abdominal section - Cable length: 16 meters - Cable maximum load: 12.5 metric tons

Optional:  
\- 90mm riot cannon (hand-carried)

 _Patlabor_ analogue: AV-45 Ingram

Known Pilot(s):

Designated:  
\- P.O. Judy Hopps  
\- P.O. Howard Hylander

Reserve:  
\- Lt. Virginia Lee Foxape  
\- P.O. Nick Wilde  
\- P.O. Earl Beaverbrook

Special Notes:

Currently in the "not-quite-prototypical" phase, so Inaba Heavy Industries is taking a special interest in how the ZPD uses its three machines.

Has three different head designs so that Inaba Heavy industries can judge which design is best.

To facilitate transport to the field, each Ingrowl unit comes with its own Labor-carrier truck.

TFV-44 Crabmammal

Model Number: TFV-44

Code name: Crabmammal

Use: Construction labor - specialized for mountainous or wooded terrain

Manufacturer: Inaba Heavy Industries

Height: 6.14 meters

Width: 3.70 meters

Weight:9.06 metric tons (10.01 metric tons when fully equipped)

Armour: Fiber-reinforced plastic & fibre reinforced material

Maximum lifting capacity: 15 metric tons.

 _Patlabor_ analogue: TFV-97 Crabman

Special notes:

\- Able to move either insect-style by walking or by driving using the retractable wheels within each leg.

\- Is still able to move if one leg is removed.

* * *

Captain Polecatsky's hand-standing habit is a reference to the fact that spotted skunks are known to do handstands - to get better aim with their scent glands!

 _Great Pawzinger_ and _Dangatoh_ are references to mecha anime _Great Mazinge_ r and _Hyper Combat Unit Dangaioh_. Similarly, _The Warty Frog_ is the Zootopian equivalent of _The Shaggy Dog_.


	4. Robin of Foxley - Part I

**BACKGROUND MUSIC:**

1) Kenji Kawai - "Another Day at the Office" ("Salaryman no Nichijou") - from _Earth Defense Dai-Guard_

* * *

The compact, small-mammal-scaled convertible pulled into the small lot that outside the converted warehouse that was now home to Special Vehicles Second Section.

Its driver promptly got out and made her way through the doors into the hangar, regarding the Ingrowls from Division 2 lined up on one side and the older CPL-44S Python Zeeplabors on the other. She'd seen the Ingrowls in action from news footage of their deployment on Okavango Road.

The newcomer noted with dismay that one of the Ingrowls – Unit 2 – had yet to be fully cleaned, and still had dents and scratches from its previous ordeal. With all the grit from the department store debris covering it, it was hard to believe that it was a machine fresh off the assembly line.

One of the mechanics, a burly hyena woman, soon walked up to the new arrival. "Can I help ya?"

The newcomer looked up at the hyena. "Could you tell me where Captain Bogo's office is?"

The hyena pointed to the catwalk. "Upstairs, through that door, second door on the left."

"Thank you."

"Couldn't help but notice you eyeballin' those bad boys," chuckled the hyena. "Real beauts, aren't they?"

"Inaba Heavy Industries Advanced Vehicle Model 45 – aka. the Ingrowl patrol Labor." the new arrival quoted from memory. "6.02 tons. 8.02 meters tall. SCB powerplant. SCLM drive system. Armed with an electromagnetic baton, as well as a 37-millimeter revolver cannon interchangeable with a 37-millimeter tranquilizer pellet gun. Designed specifically for police use so as to make a psychological impact on the community – deterring crime while making the public feel safe."

With that, the newcomer turned away, leaving the hyena gaping in her wake.

* * *

Judy would have liked nothing better than to forget last night's deployment on Okavango Road, but going to work that morning meant she had to put up with Hylander bragging constantly about his stealth skills that night.

"I still can't believe I pulled it off!" chuckled the hyrax. "You'd have thought that that raccoon would have heard me moving around!"

Now Judy had had enough. "Look Hylander, you got the first Labor kill of the Division. I'm sure we're _all_ impressed, but-"

"Oh no!" said Hylander. "I'm not trying to belittle you. In fact, I'll admit I'm a little jealous of you."

"Why's that?"

"You were the first mammal of our Division to draw one of our 38-millimeter revolver cannons." The hyrax sat at his desk, resting his chin in his hands, sighing longingly. "Hopefully I'll be the first to _fire_ them. I bet the bullet just _sings_ as it leaves the chamber!"

Judy was getting a better and better idea of what exactly made her uncomfortable around Hylander.

Just then, Clawhauser burst into the office. Being a bigger mammal than the rest of the lower-ranked mammals of Division 2, he left quite an impression as he staggered in, panting. "You… You guys! Our last member's coming!"

"Already?" said Beaverbrook, setting down a copy of _Coins and Banknotes of Mammalkind_.

"I thought you said they wouldn't be here for another week," said Judy.

"Tha… That's what I thought too," panted Clawhauser. "But it turns out she's coming here early. I dunno what time, but I hear she'll be coming _today_! And that's not all!" The portly cheetah took out a sheet from his pocket. "I found out her name and where she's transferring from."

"Oh?" Hylander raised an eyebrow. "Not her species?"

Clawhauser's ears drooped. "It didn't mention her species…"

"Her name didn't tell you anything?" asked Hylander. "Usually that's a giveaway."

"Gee," quipped Wilde, looking up from his box of blueberries. "Tell me, how many species come to mind when you think of 'Wilde'."

"Very funny, fox," grumbled Hylander.

"And how many species have claws, Benjamin _Claw_ hauser?" continued Wilde. "And for all I knew, Hopps could've been a kangaroo until I met her."

"Hey!" piped up Judy.

"Wh-what _is_ her name then?" said Beaverbrook, nervously glancing at Wilde and Hylander.

"Okay you guys…" said Clawhauser, glancing at the slip of paper. "Her name is Lieutenant Virginia Lee Foxape, and she used to be with the Deerbrooke County Police."

Silence fell on Division 2.

Wilde raised an eyebrow. "Fox… ape?"

"Maybe she's the adopted child of an interspecies couple?" Judy suggested.

"Hadn't thought of that," said Beaverbrook, adjusting his glasses.

"But what species _is_ she?" said Hylander. "Wait, she's a Lieutenant?"

Clawhauser nodded.

The hyrax whistled. "Must cut a figure in the department then. That'd make her our second-in-command!"

Hylander then began running his hands through the fur on his head. "Confound it, I wish we'd known this earlier! How are we going to make a good impression if we know nothing about her?!"

"Is it that important?" said Judy.

"If she's going to be our superior, we need to show her due respect," said Hylander. "Not knowing her species or background means we could make a _faux pas_ right out the gate!"

" _Faux pas_ for fox-ape…" muttered Wilde.

"We know she was last in Deerbrook County…" said Judy.

"That's pretty remote," said Beaverbrook. "I'm guessing she's a country girl?"

"Brilliant!" said Hylander, bursting out of his chair to face Judy. "You could give us valuable insights here, Hopps!"

Judy backed away from Hylander. "Wha… Me?"

"Yes, you!" said Hylander, grinning from ear to rounded ear. "You're from the country. You'll know how to address her!"

"Now hold on," said Judy. "Burrows County's nothing like Deerbrooke County. The geography's different."

"Oh?"

"The Tri-Burrows are flat open fields – like the Meadowlands but way more farms," explained Judy. "Deerbrooke County's way different from what I've heard. For one, it's way more trees and mountains – so less farming and more mining and lumber."

"Now that you mention it," said Beaverbrook. "My family comes from there originally."

"Wait, what about mining?" said Judy, snapping her fingers as a realization hit her. "More mines are using Labors these days, right?"

"You think that's where she picked up the experience?" said Clawhauser.

"See? That tells us something!" said Hylander. "Maybe she's another digging species – like a gopher or another bunny."

"Don't most foxes dig?" said Clawhauser, with a glance at Wilde.

"That would explain _half_ the name…" said Hylander.

"Hang on…" Beaverbrook logged into Ready Room 2's ancient desktop computer. "Yes, here!" He angled the screen to show the website to the other officers. "They're putting up a new dam near Podunk. There's a _lot_ of Labors at work building it."

"Dam-builders, then," said Hylander. "Could be another beaver."

"What about a squirrel?" Clawhauser pondered.

"Huh?"

"Do they use Labors in the lumber industry?"

"Do they?" said Hylander.

"I think some companies do," said Wilde.

"I see where you're going," said Judy. "You think that if she's working with trees, she's a tree-dwelling species."

Clawhauser shrugged. "Just a thought really…"

"Are there any tree-dwelling foxes?" said Hylander. "That would explain 'fox-ape'."

"I think grey foxes like going up trees," said Judy.

"Actually," Wilde piped up. "You actually don't see that many grey foxes with vulpine last names."

"Why not?" said Clawhauser.

"They're _called_ foxes," said Wilde, clasping his hands behind his head as he reclined in his chair and looked at the ceiling. "But they're actually a different genus from most of us; we're _Vulpes,_ they're _Urocyon_. Believe it or not, us Reds are more closely related to wolves than we are to grey foxes. Can't even reproduce together."

"I… did not know that…" Hylander murmured. Beaverbrook studied his webbed feet.

Judy began to fiddle with the key drive on her lanyard as she realized she hadn't known that either.

Now she began to wonder about her old childhood bully, Gideon Grey, who – despite what his name implied – was a _red_ fox. That had always bugged her. With that in mind, maybe "Fox-ape" really _was_ just a mindless name?

Judy was about to suggest this to the group when the door to the Ready Room swung open, revealing the massive frame of Captain Bogo. Everyone stood up and saluted.

"At ease," the bull huffed. "I've come here today to introduce you to the last member of the team." Bogo then stood aside, allowing the rest of Division 2 to take in the new arrival. "Lieutenant?"

Everyone stared as Division 2's final member stepped into the room.

She wasn't a mole.

She wasn't a rabbit.

She wasn't a beaver.

She wasn't a fox – red or grey.

She wasn't an ape – whatever those were.

"Lieutenant Virginia Lee Foxape," the uniformed opossum gave a curt salute, a small grin on her muzzle. "I look forward to working with you all."

Silence filled the Ready Room as Division 2 looked up and down their new co-worker. The opossum was on the gaunt side, with steely blue eyes that made her seem to stare right through you. The way her fleshy digits poked out from her furred hands and paws made her look as though she was wearing fingerless gloves and paw wraps.

 _[OST1]_

Hylander finally broke the silence, jerking to attention with a salute. " _Ma'am!_ "

The hyrax then gave a sidelong glare to his fellow officers. What, were they supposed to salute, too?

"I'll leave you to get acquainted," said Bogo, stepping out of the Ready Room.

"Uh, it's nice to meet you, Lietuenant Fox-ape- er, 'Folks-app'," said Beaverbrook, who abruptly remembered how the opossum herself had pronounced her surname.

"Show some respect, Beaverbrook," growled Hylander, not breaking his salute.

The Lieutenant sighed. "Yes, my last name's spelling can be misleading. Usually I just go by 'Lee' to avoid confusion."

"Understood, Lieutenant Lee, ma'am!" barked Hylander, still saluting. Was he even blinking?

"Just 'Lee' is fine," the opossum sighed again. "There's no need to be _quite_ so formal."

"Yes, ma'am!" said Hylander, finally dropping his salute, but still standing to attention.

Judy groaned. Wilde facepalmed. They could tell it was taking all of the opossum's poise to not do the same.

"Howard Hylander, right?" said Lee, glancing over at Beaverbrook. "And you referred to him as Beaverbrook?"

"Yes, ma'am!" said Hylander.

"Earl Beaverbrook," said Beaverbrook, extending a hand to Lee. "Sorry I got your name wrong earlier."

"No hard feelings." Lee returned the handshake before turning to Hylander, "Captain Bogo says I'm to be the backup to your Labor now."

"It'd be an honor, ma'am!" said Hylander, earning a twitch of the eyebrow from Lee.

"I guess that puts me on Carrier duty for good, then?" said Beaverbrook.

"Looks like it," said Lee. "Sorry to edge you out."

"Oh, don't be," said Beaverbrook, raising his hands. "I think I like a backstage role like that would be better anyway."

"Nothing ignoble about carrier duty, Beaverbrook," chuckled Hylander. "All parts of the finely tuned law enforcement machine and all that."

"Speaking of law enforcement machines," said Lee, turning to Hylander. "I noticed that your Labor's still showing traces of last night's ordeal."

"Ah, yes," said Hylander. "Assorted debris mixed with rainwater will do that. It's a dirty business, but someone's got to do it!" The hyrax puffed out his chest.

"Well, use more caution in future," said Lee, brow suddenly creasing. "Your life depends on those machines. It'd behoove you to show them a little more care."

Hylander seemed to deflate like a balloon. "Y-yes, ma'am…"

Wilde shot Hylander his trademark smirk. For once, Judy smirked along with him.

"With that," Lee sat at Ready Room 2's last unoccupied desk. "I'm hoping my time here will be a fruitful one."

* * *

NOTES:

SCB: Superconductive Battery Cells

SCLM: Superconductive Linear Motor

With that technobabble out of the way, time to talk ecology!

Virginia Lee Foxape: Virginia opossum (Didelphis virginiana) - The inspiration behind Lee's first name should be obvious there. As for Lee's surname, things get… complicated. When European explorers first came to the 'New World', they claimed to have discovered a freakish hybrid of fox and ape there. Their discovery would turn out to be related to neither fox nor ape – it was an opossum!


	5. Robin of Foxley - Part II

**BACKGROUND MUSIC:**

1) Toshihiko Sahashi - "The Words" - from _The Big O_

* * *

 _"So what's the story this time?"_ asked Wilde through the radio as Division 2 set out on its first deployment with a full complement.

 _"An Ushii Bullfrog,"_ said Captain Bogo. _"Pilot's taking issue with lax Labor regulations. He's got it into his head that smashing everything up will get the government to tighten them up."_

In the oversized passenger seat of Unit 1's carrier, Judy vowed to take down the Bullfrog before Hylander could upstage her again.

Decking up was a quick affair – with decidedly less ceremony than on Okavango Road. Judy's Ingrowl was the first to step out of its payload bay. As she approached the site of the incident, Judy noticed Wilde's command car inching up a rather short distance behind her.

"Do you mind?!" she said into her comms system.

"Hey, I'm just keeping an eye on you is all," said Wilde.

"I don't need babysitting," growled Judy.

"Like you didn't need any on Okavango Road?" said Wilde.

"Hey, _you're_ the one that nearly got turned into a pancake!"

"Well, at least I wasn't _causing_ damage!"

 _"You two_ do _realize your loudspeakers are on, right?"_ Lee's voice suddenly broke in.

Judy and Wilde both clammed up.

Sitting in his smooth-top cruiser a short distance behind the carriers, Captain Bogo groaned. His Division hadn't even seen the rogue Labor yet and they were embarrassing themselves already.

And this time, their guns were _not_ loaded with blanks…

* * *

 _[OST1]_

The UL-44 Bullfrog was a squat, bipedal machine with three-fingered hands. Instead of a proper head, it had a fighter-jet style canopy that gave the pilot a wide field of view.

This one was a yellow ochre color, but it was becoming caked with dust and muck as it smashed through the Rainforest District.

 _"We demand more regulations on Labors!"_ yelled the pine marten inside through the Bullfrog's loudspeakers. "You saw what happened in Savanna Central. Any nutjob can do _this_!" The machine drove its fist into an apartment block.

"Freeze! ZPD!" Judy's Unit 1 approached from the front, stun stick drawn. "That's as far as you go!"

"You see that!" said the pine marten. "A new-model Zeeplabor! Lionheart, the Council, the feds… they're all in the maker's pockets! This is what they've sown!"

The Bullfrog surged towards Unit 1 and delivered a punch. Judy was able to block it by raising her shield, but the force was still enough to send her tumbling backward into another apartment block.

Judy quickly righted her Labor and swung at the Bullfrog with her stun-stick. The Bullfrog was able to dodge though, meaning Judy only grazed its abdomen.

"Carrots, calm down!" a breathless Nick barked into his comms system.

"I've got it covered Wilde!" growled Judy as she shoved the Bullfrog toward a T-junction in the road, the ochre Labor's feet digging up the pavement as they went. A small park lay beyond the road, with the flowing Animazon River just beyond it.

 _"She's relocating the fight,"_ said Clawhauser through Nick's radio. _"Nothing wrong with that, right?"_

Nick was tempted to agree with him, but then the fox realized something.

"Carrots! You've gotta pull out of there!"

"Don't call me Carrots!" growled Judy.

"Just listen!" said Nick. "The humidity in this place is off the charts. If you take him too close to the river-"

"Then I won't take him too close to the River!" snarled Judy.

"Yeah, but even in the park, that Ingrowl weighs more than six tons," said Wilde. "There's a sign right next to my car that says 'FOR YOUR SAFETY, MAMMALS HEAVIER THAN TWO TONS ARE NOT ALLOWED PAST THIS BOARD.'"

Before Judy could respond to that, the Bullfrog came at her swinging. She responded by raising Unit 1's shield, but all of a sudden both Labors found themselves flailing for balance.

"Gah! Dumb bunny!" Nick buried his muzzle in his paws as the park was turned into a mud pit by the slip-sliding Labors. The ground in the park was just too soft for Labors to walk properly on!

Deaf to reason! The crazy bunny was deaf to reason!

Unit 1 tried to rush the Bullfrog, but found itself falling forward. Judy put the Ingrowl's hand in front of it and wound up driving the stun stick into the muck. Using the baton to steady herself, Judy tried to pull her Labor up again but, all of a sudden, the Bullfrog advanced on her, pulling her off the stun stick and then yanking on Unit 1's arm until it was wrenched off completely at the elbow. The Bullfrog then thrust the Zeeplabor face-first into the mud.

* * *

As she drove her command car near the park's entrance, with Unit 2 close behind, Lee grimaced. Even after seeing footage from Okavango Road, she had no idea Division 2's synergy was _this_ bad.

Just then, Wilde's command car rocketed past her towards the Bullfrog as it crouched over the prostrate Unit 1.

 _"Wilde, get out of there!"_ barked Captain Bogo.

"Stay back!" yelled the pine marten. "I'll flatten you both!"

"Right," said Wilde into his car's loudspeakers. "Because Labors are _biiiiig_ and _scaaary_!"

Lee gaped. Wilde wasn't going to try talking down _another_ psycho, was he?!

"Just give it up," Hopps voice came through Unit 1's garbled loudspeakers. "Resisting arrest won't do any good!"

"No!" said the pine marten. "Not until I've shown this city the kind of damage Labors can do in the wrong hands! Like _this_!" The Bullfrog reached over to a tree, uprooted it, and began whacking Unit 1's back with it.

"As far as I'm concerned that Labor _is_ in the wrong hands." Judy winced as she tried to get Unit 1 to its feet, but the shift in weight distribution just caused Unit 1's remaining hand to sink into the mud.

"Stay down, will ya?!" said the pine marten.

"Hey, _hey_!" said Wilde, suddenly driving up closer to Unit 1.

 _"Wilde, pull out now!_ " roared Bogo as the fox poked his head out of the command car's hatch.

Wilde ignored the order. "Well you're right about the Ingrowls," he said, casually rubbing his fingers together as he spoke through his car's loudspeakers. "City pumped a _loooot_ of our tax dollars into those money pits." He glanced towards Unit 1 beside him. "But you know what else is a big fat waste of money? Fixing 'em up after they get trashed! So why not just save everyone the extra on the tax forms and come quietly, huh?"

Lee's jaw just about hit the floor. "Wilde, you heard the Captain. Stand down!" the possum yelled into her radio.

"I got a statement to make here!" yelled the Bullfrog pilot. "I gotta show everyone how dangerous these things are!"

"Mmm-hmm," said Wilde. "Well, with all the noise you've been making, anyone can see the Labor's not wearing the pants in this relationship. If you were to actually _kill_ someone with it, you'll get life in San Quillton, but for the Bullfrog… worst-case scenario for the Labor is the blood gets hosed off and it gets melted down into scrap that they'll use to make _more_ Labors."

"B-but my message!" the rogue Labor pilot stammered.

"It'll get lost in the chaos," said Wilde. "You know the media; they like to put a face on problems – and that Bullfrog doesn't have much of a face. They'll just dump all the blame on you. If anything, you'd just come off as a massive hypocrite for willfully endangering mammals like this. You'd actually stand a _better_ chance of proving your point if you turned yourself in now."

Lee's brows raised. She hadn't expected that.

"Whaddya mean?!" demanded the Bullfrog pilot.

"If you turned yourself in now, it'd show that you can control yourself – not like that raccoon on Okavango Road. Everyone will think 'Oh wow! We got off lucky! Maybe we _should_ tighten those Labor regs?' Even Lionheart would lose sleep over that."

Silence fell over the park.

"Lieutenant?" Hylander's voice came through Lee's radio. "Any suggestions?"

Lee was speechless.

Before she could finally respond, a voice from the Bullfrog's loudspeakers cut into her thoughts.

"Okay, I'm coming out!"

 _"What?!"_ Captain Bogo's voice on the radio mirrored Lee's thoughts.

Sure enough, the Bullfrog's airplane-style canopy opened up and the pine marten inside stood up and raised his hands.


	6. Robin of Foxley - Part III

BACKGROUND MUSIC:

1) Kenji Kawai - "Scheming" ("Sakuryaku") - from Earth Defense Dai-Guard

* * *

As Joanna Namakoro saw the massive Labor-carriers pull in through the hangar door, she grimaced at the thick mud that covered Unit 1 from head-to-toe – even more so when she saw its severed left arm lashed to the top of the trailer.

"What happened out there?!" she demanded as Judy Hopps jumped out of the Labor-carrier.

The hyena got no answer. Just a sullen expression and drooped ears from the little gray rabbit. Further into the cab, Benjamin Clawhauser was about to answer for Judy when a shrill voice barked out from the ajar door marked 'OFFICE OF THE CHIEF MECHANIC.'

" _Joanna!_ "

"Yes, Chief!" sputtered the hyena.

"Tell that bumbling, baked-beans-for-brains bunny barbarian that if she comes back here with another severed limb, I'll tie that limb to her cottontail, fly her up to ten thousand feet, and drop 'er in the bay!"

"Yes, Chief…" Joanna sighed.

Judy glanced toward the door. The tiny office had no windows and she couldn't see the bat through the crack in the door. "How'd she know the arm was off?"

"Echolocation." Joanna gestured to her ears. "She can _hear_ the damage."

"Wilde!" said Captain Bogo as he climbed out of his cruiser. "I'd like a word with you – in my office!"

"Big hero…" muttered Judy, as she stared at the fox climbing up the stairs after Bogo.

* * *

"That makes twice that you have attempted to talk down renegade Labor pilots," said Bogo, regarding Wilde in front of him. "I'm trying my damndest to come up with a reason to throw the book at you, but the only offense I _can_ come up with is insubordination – and in this case, if you _had_ followed my orders, Unit 1 and the surrounding neighborhood would have been even more badly damaged."

"If you wanna kick me out, just do it already, Buffalo-butt," Wilde muttered.

Bogo pretended he hadn't heard that. "Wilde…" The Cape buffalo leaned over his desk. "Is there a particular reason you keep trying to negotiate with Labor pilots?"

The fox remained silent.

Bogo tried another tack. "Were you trying to protect Hopps? Save her the trouble of fighting?"

"No."

That was prompt enough. Wilde was a hard mammal to read, but Bogo had no reason to doubt that one answer.

"What about the Labor-criminals? Are you trying to save _them_?"

More silence.

Bogo rubbed his head with his hoof. "Listen, Wilde. I can understand your reasoning, but it's bad enough that Hopps is going crazy out there. The last thing any of us need is for her Backup to do the same."

"It's not like that," snapped Wilde. "It's Hopps who's putting mammals' lives at risk!"

"But it's _you_ putting _yours_ at risk," said Bogo. "As Unit 1's Backup, it's your job to keep Hopps from going off the rails; not the criminals."

"I figure it'd be easier to spare having to set Hopps loose on them."

A revealing answer, but less than Bogo would have liked. "Wilde, you're not a police negotiator. Sooner or later, you're going to encounter more mammals like that raccoon on Okavango Road who _won't_ listen to reason. The fact is, if everyone had common sense, we wouldn't need a police force, much less Zeeplabors."

Bogo got up and walked to the window, briefly adjusting the venetian blinds. "That pine marten was a one-in-a-billion moment. I've been on the force long enough to know that there are far too many mammals who are utterly convinced they're going to Hell no matter what they do, so they shut out the rest of the world and wallow in self-pity."

"I'm… not sure where you're going with this, sir," said Wilde.

"It's understandable – maybe even admirable – that you're trying to save these mammals from themselves, but it's not your job to do so. It's our job to make sure they don't drag the rest of the world to Hell with 'em – make sure no one else follows in their footsteps."

Bogo then turned to the fox with a piercing glare. "That also means understanding that what happens to you is _not_ an isolated event. There's a Memorial Wall in Precinct 1 that proves this. If your name winds up on that wall, someday there _will_ be someone who will look at that name and feel for you – even if you don't."

Wilde tried to say something, but no words escaped his muzzle.

Bogo returned to his chair. "Now my other concern is your partnership with Hopps. As I've said, it's your job as her Backup to make sure she doesn't end up on that wall either, and to ensure she performs to the best of her ability. You don't seem particularly willing to do so."

Wilde's sour tone returned. "What's the point if she won't listen?"

Bogo sighed. "I was afraid you'd say that. I don't know what's wrong between you, but I want you to keep trying. Like I said, no mammal's an island; your actions – or inactions – could reflect badly on _her_ career as well as yours. Is that clear, _Officer_?"

"Y-yes, sir…"

"Hopps _can_ be a better pilot, so from now on, I'd appreciate it if you two tried to meet each other halfway – for the sake of your careers, for the mammals you're _supposed_ to protect, and for the taxpayers' dollars we're now going to spend on repairing Unit 1 after that last deployment. Is understood?"

"Yes, sir…"

* * *

As Nick stepped out of the office, questions bounced around in his head. After that mention of the Memorial Wall, Nick had had the perfect opportunity to tell Bogo that a fox like him should leave the wall to the real cops and resign then and there.

So _why didn't he_?!

And that mention of Hopps' career – what did _he_ care if she got canned?! He'd told her himself that she could just go running back to Bunnyburrow. It wasn't like she didn't have a safety net if she got the boot.

Suddenly an all-too-familiar voice began ringing in his head. Would that stupid vixen just shut the hell up?!

He almost missed Virginia Lee Foxape passing him towards Bogo's office.

* * *

"You want to discuss something, Lieutenant?" said Bogo as the opossum stepped into the office.

"Yes, sir," said Lee. "It's about Officer Hopps."

* * *

 _[OST1]_

Judy was on her way to Ready Room 2 to drown her aggravation in carrot juice when her sensitive ears caught Lee mentioning her name.

Bogo was shutting the door, but that didn't stop Judy from pressing her ear to the door.

* * *

"Now then, Fox-ape, what is it?"

"It's pronounced 'Folks-app,' sir," said Lee, back ramrod straight as her gaze bored into the wall behind Bogo as he sat back down. "And as I said, it'd be easier if you just called me Lee."

"I'm too used to seeing your name on paper," said Bogo. "Now, your concern with Officer Hopps?"

"It's about her attitude, sir," said Lee, clambering into the oversized chair in front of the desk.

"Oh?"

"Both in Okavango Road and in Animazon River Park, she disregarded orders from her superiors and her Backup," said Lee. "She's also repeatedly caused collateral damage, seeing nothing wrong with hurling a ten-ton Crabmammal at a high-end department store or with using an apartment block to cushion her fall. She also pulled a 38-millimeter revolver cannon in a cramped shopping district and charged into Animazon River Park without acknowledging the muddy terrain."

"You think she's too reckless then."

"Reckless would be an understatement, sir." Lee's tone was firm as concrete. "The fact is, as long as Hopps is in Unit 1, she's a threat to herself, to her fellow officers, and to civilians. I know it sounds harsh, but I believe it's only a matter of time until her impetuousness has lethal consequences."

Bogo raised an eyebrow. "That _is_ harsh. I suppose you have a solution for this?"

"I do," said Lee. "I would recommend that Hopps be removed from her post as Forward – perhaps transferred out of Special Vehicles entirely. I can pilot Unit 1 either in the interim or on a permanent basis."

* * *

Judy backed away from the door, breathing heavily, before making a break for the Ready Room.

This was not happening… This was _not_ happening…!

* * *

Bogo's attention briefly turned to the door. Odd. Were those footsteps he'd just heard?

Dismissing it, he turned back to his second-in-command.

"I understand your logic," he remarked. "But I'm not sure I want to shake the Division up just yet."

Lee's brow furrowed. "Why not, sir?"

"Lee, this is a very young Division," said Bogo. "We've only had two deployments – of which you've only seen one – apart from you, none of us had experience with Zeeplabors; I don't think I could wrap my head around their controls even if I _could_ fit in the cockpit. Even the Ingrowls themselves are rough around the edges. It may be too soon to judge Hopps based on just two deployments."

Lee's stare intensified. "Is that all, sir?"

"Not quite," said Bogo, donning his half-moon glasses as he began typing into his desktop computer. "You took the ZPD Police Labor Aptitude Test, right?"

"Yes," Lee nodded. "I took it when I was transferred to the ZPD."

"Then look at this," said Bogo, pivoting the monitor so that the opossum could see it. "These are the rankings of _all_ mammals who've taken the PLAT."

 _1._ _M. Sanderson: 96.4%  
_ _2\. A. Polecatsky: 94.9%  
_ _3\. J. Hopps: 92.1%  
_ _4\. S. McTachy: 91.7%  
_ _5\. W. Hickory: 86.0%  
_ _6\. H. Hylander: 85.5  
_ _7\. V. Foxape: 85.4%_

Lee's eyebrows shot up after seeing Hopps' score.

"As you can see, Hopps is the only officer in the top five not with Division 1," said Bogo. "The only reason Wanda Hickory is a reserve pilot is because the Department wants to avoid continually readjusting cockpits for a mammal her size.

"In the academy, Hopps' instructors made a particular note of her ability to find unorthodox solutions to problems, and her PLAT instructors in particular were impressed with her control ability and finesse. So I know she _can_ be more careful; it's just a question of how to get her to be careful more often.

"As for you, the Deerbrooke County Police have said over and over again that they were impressed with your leadership ability and your ability to keep cool under pressure. I've seen your record; it speaks of a mammal best suited for a command position. This Division has gotten the short end of the stick for just about everything else, so I want to make full use of the mammalpower I get – by placing them in the positions they're best suited for."

"With respect, sir, those are just test results," said Lee. "There's no substitute for in-the-field experience."

"There isn't," said Bogo, taking off his glasses. "Which is why we shouldn't judge Hopps based on two deployments. The question we _should_ be asking is whether or not she can grow beyond her recklessness. You saw that in Animazon River Park, she tried to relocate the conflict, so she's _trying_ to do her job right at least.

"Now as I said, only three of us – me, you, and Clawhauser – have experience with the police, and only you have experience with law enforcement Labors. If this were a regular precinct, I'd have at least a few senior officers to help the new generation settle in. With Division 2, you're probably the closest thing I have to that." The Cape buffalo leaned back in his chair. "So I would appreciate it if you made an effort to try and encourage better behavior from Hopps yourself."

"I understand, sir," said Lee. "But I can't be sure she'll listen."

Bogo sighed. "Lee, at the very least, I need you to try."

Lee took a deep breath in. "Is that your final word on the matter?"

"For the time being, yes."

"Very well, sir." Lee saluted and turned to the door.

She tried to hide it, but Bogo noticed that the opossum's fist was clenched as she left.

* * *

When the mechanics' 'shopping platoon' came back from the Ewe-Mart, Benjamin Clawhauser had offered to shuttle Division 2's share of food up to Ready Room 2.

He was just stocking the fridge when Judy Hopps came dashing in. The little bunny looked dejected, ears drooping, eyes glazed over and angled downward as she walked over to her desk and laid her head on her arms.

"Judy?" Ben was careful to use the rabbit's first name as he closed the fridge door. "What's wrong?"

* * *

"I can't help but wonder," said Captain Polecatsky. "Why'd you put Hopps and Wilde together in the first place?"

"I was hoping Hopps's dedication would rub off on Wilde," grumbled Bogo. "Now I'm wondering if it's Wilde that needs to rub off on Hopps."

"Opposites attract, hm?" quipped the skunk. "So why d'you think things aren't working out?"

"Well, even if I didn't know it…" Bogo glanced over the files in his hands. "Wilde and Fox-ape- Wilde and _Lee_ – have said that Hopps seems to close herself off when on deployment – from Wilde in particular."

Polecatsky cradled her head in her hands. "It may be time to use that secret weapon I left you…"

"What secret weapon?"

" _Captain Bogo_!" Benjamin Clawhauser suddenly burst into the office.

"What is it, Clawhauser?!" grumbled Bogo.

The portly cheetah suddenly stood to attention. "P- _please_ don't do this, sir! I know Hopps hasn't been the most reliable cop in the world, but I think-"

"Slow down, Clawhauser!" Bogo barked. "What shouldn't I do?"

"Well…" Clawhauser studied the floor. "Hopps came and told me she'd overheard you talking with Lee about reassigning her."

Bogo buried his head in his hoof. "Of course she did…" The massive buffalo sighed. "Clawhauser, Lieutenant Lee's suggestion that Hopps be reassigned was just that – a suggestion! There are no plans to reassign anyone at the moment."

"Oh…" Clawhauser seemed to deflate even more.

"Have you or Hopps told anyone about this conversation?"

The cheetah shook his head. "No. Hopps came straight to me as far as I know…"

Bogo sighed. "I'll straighten things out with her later. In the meantime, she needn't worry. Unless she makes a colossal screw-up, she's not going anywhere."

"Y-you don't sound that sure, sir…"

Damn. Clawhauser was more observant than Bogo figured. "The point is-"

Suddenly Polecatsky coughed loudly. Bogo turned to see the skunk give a pointed head-tilt towards Clawhauser.

Bogo remembered what he and Polecatsky had been talking about earlier. "Clawhauser, are you on good terms with Hopps and Wilde?"

"Not much…" Clawhauser rubbed the back of his neck. "I've talked a bit with Judy- _Hopps_ , but not about work. Wilde doesn't talk much at all to be honest."

"Well there might be something you can do," said Bogo, sitting up straight in his chair. "Wilde at least wants to keep property damage down, but doesn't seem interested in actually backing Unit 1 up. Hopps on the other hand is _too_ motivated – she's focused, she gets a bad case of tunnel vision on the job. Ideally, one would balance out the other, but they don't even talk to one another. I want to know why and, more importantly, how I can fix that.

"Now, as Unit 1's carrier driver, you're closest to them professionally. I'd appreciate it if you could help those two see eye to eye more."

Clawhauser stiffened. "Sir, I don't know if you've noticed, but they're _not_ on the best of terms at the moment…"

Bogo glared at the cheetah. "Clawhauser, I'm not asking you to get them married. Just make sure they don't get each other killed! Now get to it!"

"Y-yes, sir!"

With that, the cheetah stepped out of the office.


	7. Robin of Foxley - Part IV

**BACKGROUND MUSIC:**

1) Kenji Kawai - "Noa's Repose" ("Noa no Hitorigoto") - from the _Patlabor - The Mobile Police_ TV series (I think)

2) Kenji Kawai - "Knock on the Tomorrow II" - from the _Patlabor - the Mobile Police_ TV series

* * *

Okay, Benjamin Frederick Clawhauser.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it (okay, you weren't given much choice… and you've already accepted it) is to figure out what's going wrong between Hopps and Wilde. If you fail, this partnership will self-destruct in five days… one day? A week? A month? Bogo hadn't given him much of a time frame.

Good luck, Ben…

Taking a deep breath in, Clawhauser walked to the hangar, where he noticed his targets from the catwalk that led from the offices. There, he soon noticed his targets.

Nick and Judy were walking toward one another. As soon as they came near one another though, they glanced at each other, then altered course so they passed each other by a considerable distance.

Clawhauser grimaced, screwing his courage to the sticking-point, memories of childhood dinners flashing through his mind.

From his vantage point, the cheetah then noticed Judy exchange a few words with Joanna Namakoro. The hyena had often talked with Judy about Unit 1. Maybe she was a good place to start?

Suddenly, Captain Bogo's bellowing voice rang in Clawhauser's ears.

" _Hopps_!" The Buffalo pointed to the door out the hangar. Must be to set the record straight about the 'reassignment' fiasco.

As Judy moved towards the stairs up to the catwalk, Clawhauser moved past her and approached Joanna. "Uh… hi?" He waved meekly.

Joanna raised an eyebrow. "Hi…?"

Ben twiddled his thumbs. "So… What did Hopps want to talk about?"

"Just how soon we were gonna get that arm back on," said Joanna, gesturing to where Unit 1's severed arm lay in front of the Labor itself.

"Nothing… personal?" Clawhauser's face contorted. He didn't like prying.

"Nooooo…?"

"Nothing about Wilde?"

"No?" The hyena sighed. "Okay, what's this about?"

Ben sighed and told Joanna about Judy's overhearing Lee and Bogo, then about Bogo's request. "I'm worried she'll be out of a job at this rate."

"That sucks…" said Joanna. "But why are you interested?"

The cheetah put his hands in his pockets. "I… I just don't like it when mammals fight. Especially when they should be close to one another."

Ben then shook his head. "The point is, I wanted to know if you had any idea why Hopps and Wilde aren't getting along."

"Couldn't tell ya about Wilde…" said Joanna. "But Judy sounded jealous of Nick. Back then I thought she was just cheesed off about missing the Labor-kill twice in a row, but now I dunno… I get the feeling there's something else between 'em."

"Like what?"

"I dunno," said Joanna. "You'd have to ask her – or him. But my Mom has a saying; 'When a salt-shaker picks a fight with a pepper mill, ten years later you'll _still_ be picking up the paprika!'"

Ben stared. "…What does that mean?"

"Search me." The hyena shrugged. "It just sounded fitting. Either way, you'll wanna hear it straight from the little guys' mouths."

"Alright, thanks anyway," Clawhauser sighed, turning away from Joanna to head back to the Ready Room.

"Clawhauser?" said Joanna, prompting the cheetah to look back at her. "Just so you know, I'm rootin' for ya. From what I hear, Wilde's more careful. If Judy listened to him, it's save us techs this kind of headache." She gestured to Unit 1, in all its battered, dented, mud-covered, one-armed glory. "So if ya need any help, you only need to ask."

"Thanks," said Ben.

* * *

When Clawhauser returned to Ready Room 2, he was surprised to find only Earl Beaverbrook sitting there, his nose in a copy of _Great Pawcific Ocean Liners_.

"Where'd everybody go?" said Clawhauser.

"Oh, Lee's gone jogging." Beaverbrook adjusted his glasses. "Hylander went with her. I think Captain Bogo's talking with Hopps. Don't know where Wilde's gone off to."

Clawhauser was about to go find Wilde when Judy squeezed past him into the room.

"Oh, I was just looking for you," said Clawhauser, smiling down at the rabbit.

"Bogo says nobody's getting reassigned," Judy sighed as she got behind her desk, head cradled in her hands. "Am I _really_ that bad?"

Clawhauser and Beaverbrook exchanged a fearful glance. Neither of them wanted to answer the question. Ben in particular knew that if he said yes, Judy would take offense, but if he said no, she'd think it was just empty reassurance.

Beaverbrook wound up taking the initiative. "Wilde's been trying to keep down the collateral damage. Maybe you could ask him for a few pointers?"

"Wilde…" Judy huffed, trailing off as she stared at the wall in front of her.

Once again, Beaverbrook beat Ben to the punch. "Something wrong with him?"

"You mean besides the fact that he's _intentionally_ slacking off despite all the effort I put in? Not much, really!" Judy rolled her eyes.

"Intentionally?" said Clawhauser. "You don't mean that, right?"

"Well, _he_ does," Judy turned her swivel chair around to face Clawhauser and Beaverbrook. "He told me himself he was trying to get kicked off the force."

Clawhauser and Beaverbrook exchanged a look of disbelief.

"Why would he do that?" said Ben.

"He said his being here was a mistake." Judy eyed the floor. "Said he can only be a 'sly fox.'"

"Why not quit then?" said Beaverbrook.

Judy snorted. "Ask him!"

Clawhauser made a mental note to do just that.

Beaverbrook shrugged. "Maybe he _does_ like it here?"

Now it was Clawhauser and Judy that exchanged a look of confusion.

"Maybe deep down, he wants to be a part of this?" continued Beaverbrook. "I mean, why else would he join in the first place?"

"But now that he's here, why's he trying to get out?!" Judy threw up her hands. "I've wanted to be a cop my whole life! I worked my tail off to here, but Wilde just wants all that effort and throw it down the toilet?!"

The rabbit realized how much her voice had raised and eased up. "I'm sorry. It's just that I joined the force to make the world a better place. You don't become a cop if you don't want to help mammals. If Wilde can't understand that, he should cut the nonsense and resign now."

Judy then got up from her desk and sauntered out the door. Clawhauser thought of going after her, but decided to give her some space first.

So Judy took Wilde's behavior as an insult. Enlightening, but only half the story. Now for the other half...

"Hey, Beaverbrook? Earl? Uh…?"

"Earl, Beaverbrook, makes no difference," said Beaverbrook. "Some mammals still call me Max after my middle name, but not so much these days."

"Thanks Earl," said Clawhauser. "I was just wondering, how'd you figure that about Wilde?"

"Figure what?"

"That deep down, he wants to be a cop?"

The beaver clenched his buckteeth. "I just… I just figured that- You don't get through the academy if you don't put some hustle into it, right?"

"Good point…" Ben stroked his chin. Somehow though, he wasn't satisfied by that answer. "Why try and get kicked out though?"

"Well…" Beaverbrook cut himself short, stroked his own chin, removed a popsicle stick from his pocket, and began chewing it in thought.

Ben sat as his own desk and sighed. Wilde was an enigma to be sure. He'd have to approach him directly.

* * *

But by this point, Wilde had proven to be a master at evasion – particular when any degree of work needed to be done.

Thankfully, one of the mechanics – a well-toned coyote – was able to point out the fox's location, and soon he found himself scanning the riprap between the field and the Bay before finding Wilde sitting in his lawn chair, fishing as usual.

"Hey, uh… Nick?" Ben waved nervously. "Is it okay if I call you Nick?"

"Okay by me, Benjy," Wilde chuckled.

"Okay," Clawhauser had heard Nick call Judy 'Carrots,' Bogo 'Buffalo-butt,' and Hylander 'Blunderbuss,' so 'Benjy' didn't feel that bad in comparison. It reminded him of living with his little brother.

The cheetah sat down cross-legged beside Nick's lawn chair. "So… No bites?"

Nick smirked under his wayfarers. "Not a one."

A long silence followed.

"Should've brought out some donuts…" Clawhauser murmured.

"Would've helped, yeah."

More silence.

Clawhauser considered his options before deciding on the direct approach. "Are-are you really trying to get kicked off the force?" he almost whispered.

"Mmm-hmm." Nick nodded, without turning away from the bay.

"Why? I mean, we're alright, aren't we?"

"Oh, you are." Clawhauser wished the fox would take those sunglasses off so he could read Nick's expression. "It's just that they'll give me the boot sooner or later, so I figured, why not sooner?"

"Why would they give you the boot?"

"Tell me, Benjy," said Nick. "How often have you heard the words 'trustworthy' and 'fox' used unironically in the same sentence?"

Ben didn't have an answer.

"Not often," said Nick. "Sooner or later, they're gonna push me out."

"You got through the academy, didn't you?" said Clawhauser, forcing a smile.

"Please." Nick's tone was oddly dissonant. "I got through the academy 'cause there weren't enough small mammals with Labor certification who signed up. I figure I'm just a placeholder until someone better qualified gets in. Then they'll probably bump me down to parking duty, or find some other way of shoving me out. I figure that if I get kicked out first, it'll spare me purgatory in a clown vest."

"Th-they wouldn't do that, would they?!" Ben sputtered.

"Why not?" said Nick. "The whole Division's a joke, really. Just ask Captain Buffalo-butt. No one knows it more than him."

"Why?"

"Chief Swinton likes to say Bogo's a well-respected officer, but really, she and the rest of the Old Guard can't stand the sight of him, so they put him out here where they figure he can't do any damage except to his own credibility."

"Why's that?"

Through the weeds came Judy Hopps. She looked puzzled at what Nick had just said. Ben figured she was trying to get Nick to stop fishing again.

"It's like this, Carrots." Nick took his sunglasses off at last. "You know the Barry Wallace Murder?"

Ben and Judy both looked at each other. The murder of Barry Wallace – a wallaby liquor store owner – had been highly publicized thanks to its outcome. It had started almost a year ago, when Wallace had been found garroted to death. After the Lieutenant in charge of the case, Owen Humperdink, had been seemingly thwarted at every turn after evidence began disappearing mysteriously, a frustrated Adrian Bogo – then Captain of Precinct 7 – had stepped in personally. Bogo had rigorously examined the disappearance of the evidence before finally arresting Lieutenant Humperdink himself for attempting to pervert the course of justice.

It had turned out that Humperdink had committed the murder. Wallace had discovered the camel Lieutenant and some officer friends of his had been running a _de facto_ protection racket, threatening to report trumped-up health and safety violations against eateries if they didn't serve the officers for free. Wallace had tried blackmailing Humperdink, but the camel murdered him instead.

"But the Wallace case was one of Bogo's biggest successes," said Judy.

"And one of the ZPD's biggest scandals," said Nick. "It's never good for the force when a cop gets a murder rap, especially when said cop's dad is a Borough Chief. You'll remember Humperdink Sr. retired early after his son was convicted.

"Anyway, Swinton and the Old Guard were in a tough spot as it was, so you can imagine their reactions when Bogo gets caught in a press conference saying that no one is above the law – 'no matter their position, no matter their connections.'"

Judy scowled, foot thumping. "So? What's wrong with a cop believing in Rule of Law?"

"Carrots, this is the Old Guard we're talking about," chuckled Nick. "The last thing they want is a crusader cop making them look like idiots. So they figure Buffalo-butt's Kryptonite. But thanks to the case, he's _popular_ Kryptonite, so they can't exactly punish him.

"So what they do is they send him over here – as far away from Precinct 1 as they can get him. Here, he's stuck between Anna Polecatsky's rising star and Bureau Chief Buckminster's credit-nabbing, and he can't interfere in police investigations."

Judy's nose twitched. "So Bogo's here because he's _too_ good a cop?"

"In a nutshell." Nick's attention turned to his fishing pole. "Zootopia's a funny place, Carrots. Things like the city's Old Guards are what happen when you put a bunch of the businessmammals, career politicians, and other vested interests together in one _roo-o-o-o-o-o-o-m-!_ "

The sound of whizzing greeted Ben's ears and Nick struggled to contain the fishing pole in his paws. The fox looked about to fall off the riprap when Ben grabbed Nick by the shoulders. The three of them were strong enough to yank an impressive cod out of the water.

"What is it with you and the fish, fluff?" groaned Nick, still in Clawhauser's arms. "Three times you've darkened my door, and each time I get a big bite like this." Clawhauser put Nick down as they pulled the fish in. "You some kind of fish whisperer?"

Judy rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I'm subliminally telling the fish to swallow your cheap bait to make sure you're actually contributing to the unit."

 _[OST1]_

She then stared at the cod as Clawhauser stuffed it in the cooler beside Nick's chair. "Still, it's weird. I did a bit of catch-and-release in Bunnyburrow, and I never had this kind of luck."

"Oh yeah!" Clawhauser saw an opening for small talk. "I've been meaning to ask, what's it like out there – in Bunnyburrow, I mean?"

"Oh, Bunnyburrow? Pretty… well…" Judy sat down and rested her chin on her knees as she stared out onto the Bay. "Pretty boring, honestly. Don't get me wrong, it's nice and all. I'd just rather have some excitement in my life."

"'Excitement' would be an understatement, Fluff, given how you're stomping around the place in Unit 1," said Nick, casting another hook into the bay.

Clawhauser burst in before Judy could retort. " _So!_ What's your family like?"

"Oh, we're just farmers for the most part, but we've done pretty well for ourselves. We bring in plenty of carrots, but we deal in a bunch of other stuff too – there's potatoes, cabbages, strawberries…"

"How 'bout blueberries?" Nick piped up.

"Yeah. Why?"

"No reason." Nick readjusted his wayfarers.

Ben pressed further. "Any brothers or sisters?"

Judy gave a sly grin. "Clawhauser, I'm a bunny. Is that a trick question?"

"Oh, uh…"

Judy promptly took out her phone and proceeded to enthusiastically introduce in rapid succession more siblings than the other two mammals could count.

"Hopps! Hopps! Hopps!" Ben held up his hands. "How many siblings do you have?!"

"Oh…" Judy tilted her head in thought. "About 307…"

"Three-hundred-and-seven?!" Ben and Nick chorused.

"Oh, that's just communally," said Judy. Only twenty-six of them are actual blood siblings. The rest are mostly cousins – plus the odd niece or nephew."

"Oh…" Ben found growing up with even twenty-five brothers and sisters a bit much. "You're one of the older kits, right?"

"Yep. Only five older than me."

 _Only_ five?

"So you've got big sister privileges?" Ben chuckled, fondly remembering cubhood with his own little brother.

"You bet," said Judy. "Of course, Junior would beg to differ."

"Junior?"

"Oh, Stu Jr." Judy showed her phone again, this time showing a rabbit that looked eerily like a male version of Judy standing beside a gangly-looking Labor. "He's the oldest boy. He likes to say he's the buck of the house, but I'm technically older than he is."

"Hang on, what's that?" Nick suddenly seemed interested in the photo. "Is that a farming Labor?"

"Oh yeah." Judy shifted to a photo of an older, pudgier male rabbit – Judy's father, Ben guessed – standing proudly with the Labor in the background. "That's our Bumpacrop. Dad got him about a year-and-a-half ago. I got experience working with Labors on him."

The bipedal agricultural Labor was a mustard-yellow color, with long, spindly arms, large lights on top, and an open cockpit, beneath which the word 'CHARLIE' could be made out. A grain platform hung from its abdomen.

"Charlie?" Nick raised an eyebrow.

Judy sighed. "That's the pet name my Dad gave him."

"Awww!" Ben couldn't help himself.

"Yeah, my Dad's the sentimental type," Judy chuckled as she looked at the photo herself. "He likes to name things like tractors or combines, so naming a Labor was the next logical step."

"Heh. Now I'm wondering what you'd call Unit 1." That's it, Ben. Focus on what binds them all together. "Big guy kinda looks like a Dennis, don't you think?"

"No…" Judy mused. "Not really seeing it. Gotta be more 'fights-for-justice' than that… Alphonse, maybe?"

" _No_!"

Judy and Ben suddenly turned to Nick, startled by his panicked outburst.

The fox quickly collected himself. "I mean… I've just had… an _acquaintance_ named Alphonse that I've had some bad run-ins with in the past."

"Well, what do _you_ think would be a good name?" Ben asked Nick.

"Hmmm…" Nick exaggeratedly rubbed his chin. "How 'bout 'Your Name Here'?"

Clawhauser giggled. Judy rolled her eyes. "Ha, ha, ha."

"How about 'CAUTION: INCOMING BUNNY'?"

"Nick…!" Judy growled.

"Madam, we're naming a hunk of metal." Nick feigned being offended. "I wouldn't _dream_ of making light of this."

Bast almighty, getting these two to cooperate was hard. Still, Ben found an opportunity and pounced. "C'mon, Nick," he urged. "What's a good name for a 'justice' kinda guy?"

"Well, Robin, maybe…" Nick muttered as he cast his attention back to his fishing pole.

"Robin?"

"Forget I said anything." Nick seemed eager to change the subject all of a sudden.

"Something wrong?" said Ben, hoping he hadn't gone _too_ far to get a handle on Nick.

"It's just embarrassing is all," Nick sighed. "When I was a kit, I was raised on stories of Robin of Foxley."

"Oh…!"

"My Dad was a big fan, and my Mom liked to joke that she was a descendant of Robin and Marian – and I think she was a Brian Redfurred fangirl. Anyway, that's why 'Robin' popped into my mind."

A silence hung over the three officers until Nick burst out laughing.

"Makes no sense anyway." The fox gave a wan smile as he took off his sunglasses. "Naming a cop Labor after an outlaw…"

Judy smirked. "At least Robin of Foxley got off his lazy tail and did something for his fellow mammal."

Nick stared at Judy before putting his Wayfarers back on and turning back to his fishing. "Guess you're right…"

Ben and Judy glanced at one another, not sure what to make of this display.

Before either of them could press any further, Nick immediately hooked onto something big again. Ben and Judy rushed to hold the fox down before he got pulled into the water.

"This has gotta be a piece of junk or something!" Nick grunted. "I never get this lucky twice!"

The three officers held Nick down until he reeled his load in. Indeed, his hook had latched onto an old hubcap, but the policemammals were left slack-jawed at the rather large octopus clutching onto it.

"What the cuss?!" Nick muttered.

* * *

Ben walked back into the hangar. Nick promptly dashed beside him to the washrooms, face black with ink after the unruly cephalopod had squirted him to make its getaway. Funny how it had made a break for it the moment the mentioned calamari…

Now Ben's attention turned back to his 'mission.' As he pondered what to do with the information he'd gleaned today, a voice came behind him that sent a shiver down to the tip of his tail.

"Benjamin Clawhauser, you're a mad genius!"

* * *

After Nick finally got the ink off his face, he made his way to join Judy and Ben in Ready Room 2.

As soon as he entered the room though, an announcement from Chief Mechanic Camazotz made its way over the PA system.

 _"Now hear this, ya bums! Since things have been getting_ messy _of late, I'm instituting a new policy. Captain Polecatsky and Captain Bogo have both agreed with me that from now on, Zeeplabor Forwards and Backups are required to take over for the mechanics when it comes to Labor cleaning and repainting."_

"What?!" chorused several voices in the Ready Room, but their voices were soon drowned out by cheers coming from the mechanics.

Nick stared at the ceiling. Thanks a _lot_ , universe…

* * *

 _[OST2]_

At the end of the (thankfully deployment-less) day, Nick made his way out of the hangar. His eyes chanced to glance up at Unit 1, which (mercifully) had been cleared of mud when Camazotz made her announcement. Soon, he noticed something on the machine's chest area below the neck.

"Dumb bunny…" the fox muttered as he continued on his way.

There, on Unit 1's left-hand side, between its primary and secondary hatches, was one word, painting in a brush script:

 ** _Robin_**

* * *

 **...and now the title of this 'episode' makes sense at last! "Robin of Foxley" is - as you've probably guessed - the Zootopian equivalent of Robin of Loxley, aka. Robin Hood.**

 **Similarly, Brian Redfurred is a reference to the late Brian Bedford, Robin Hood's voice actor in the 1973 Disney movie.**


	8. Robin of Foxley - Part V

**BACKGROUND MUSIC:**

1) Disney Peaceful Piano - "Try Everything" (original by Shakira)

* * *

Judy Hopps usually greeted each morning with enthusiasm, but since arriving at SV2, it felt like getting out of bed each morning felt harder and harder with each new layer of aggravation.

Recently she'd rewatched a favorite movie – _Avitopia_ – to cheer her up, but then made the mistake of looking on Preddit to see what the internet had to say about the movie. There, she found a post the pointed out major character development flaws to the point where Judy found it difficult to look at _Avitopia_ the same way.

It reminded her of what Wilde had said after the Okavango Road deployment. Sure, she tended to charge in without thinking, but Judy had always feared that if she slowed down in pursuing her goals – even for a moment – she'd never get moving again. 'The Centipede's Dilemma,' they called it; if Judy stopped to think about _how_ she did her job, she'd never actually be able to _do_ it.

Ah, Frith… Hopefully she wasn't running into the Centipede's dilemma just by thinking about what had happened.

Now, as she entered the hangar, a voice caught her from above.

"And just where do you think _you're_ going?"

The sound of leather wings greeted Judy's long ears as SV2's Chief Mechanic fluttered down in front of her. To Judy's chagrin, Lucy Camazotz was… smiling?

This was not good.

"Uh, I'm heading to the Ready Room?" said Judy. "I'm on duty…?"

"Don't you have some… _cleaning_ to do?" The fanged grin grew wider and wider. Frith almighty, bats had terrifying grins! Judy hated to imagine what look she had behind her aviators' sunglasses.

The bunny glanced toward Unit 1 – alias Robin. "Uh, Unit 1's clean already…" It certainly looked like all the Animazon River mud had been cleared off the Ingrowl.

"Yeah, we got most of it off," said Camazotz. "But just like us mammals, Labors always have those hard-to-reach places. I figured a couple of shorties like you and bottlebrush-butt- ah, speak of the devil!"

The bat's grin grew even wider as she turned to Nick Wilde, who was now sauntering into the hangar.

"C'mere, Wilde," Camazotz called to the puzzled fox. "I was just reminding your partner here that you two have some work to do on your Labor's hard-to-reach areas. Joanna!"

Joanna Namakoro promptly walked up, with a toothy grin that matched her bat superior's. The hyena handed Judy a hosepipe and Wilde a bottle of vehicle shampoo.

Judy's nose twitched as she took the hose. _Joanna, you turncoat!_

"And who knows?" Camazotz continued. "Maybe us techs missed a spot or two elsewhere. Best get the whole dang things scrubbed down to be sure."

"Let me get this straight…?" Wilde pinched the bridge of his muzzle. "You want us to wash down an eight-meter Ingrowl that you've already hosed off?!"

"Yes!" You'd think the bat's grin would split her head open at this rate.

Judy thought herself sufficiently 'encouraged' by the Chief Mechanic, but Wilde seemed to have more guts for once. "Well, last I checked, you aren't in our direct line of command, so I don't think-"

Camazotz's grin vanished in a heartbeat as she lifted a wing to adjust her sunglasses so that the glare from the sun outside the hangar shone directly in Wilde's face.

"Where do we start?" murmured Wilde.

* * *

"So… How do we do this?" Wilde groaned as he and Judy looked up at Unit 1's massive form.

"We could start from the feet and work our way up," Judy murmured.

Wilde stared at the Labor a little longer before shaking his head. "Nah, I say we work from the top down."

Judy's foot began to stamp. "What's the difference?"

Wilde shrugged. "If we work from the top down, it'll drip down and do half the work for us."

"You sure it works like that?" Judy's nose twitched.

"Okay, we'll settle it like this," Wilde sighed as he took a coin out of his pocket. "Heads we do top down, tails the feet up."

Wilde flipped the coin before Judy could react. The fox tried to catch the coin in midair, but knocked it in the air by accident. The coin then fell into Judy's collar, lodging between her uniform and her neck fur.

Wilde's head tilted. "That… has never happened before."

* * *

The two eventually decided that since the coin landed with 'heads' facing outward, they'd wash Unit 1 from the top down. Now they stood atop one of the maintenance platforms, at eye level with the Ingrowl.

"So, who does the actual hosing?" said Wilde.

" _I_ will." Judy just grabbed the hose from Wilde's paws and began pulling the trigger on its sprayer fitting. The fitting was big cat-sized, so Judy had to use both hands just to hold it. But only a trickle of water came out.

"This thing jammed?" grumbled Judy, batting at the fitting.

As the rabbit tried to persuade the water to come out, Wilde clambered down the ladder to where the hose connected to the building's water supply.

There, he noticed that the tap wasn't turned on all the way, so the fox nonchalantly turned up the pressure.

Suddenly he heard a cry come from above him. He ran back to see Judy thoroughly soaked, trying to wrangle a writhing hose.

Wilde laughed; he couldn't help it.

The vulpine soon regretted this, for he soon saw the drenched, furious rabbit point the nozzle in his direction…

* * *

After hosing down 'Robin,' the next step was applying the vehicle shampoo.

"You can count yourself lucky your tail's so short," Wilde grumbled, still a little damp as the two officers applied shampoo to Unit 1's chest. "It takes forever to dry out fox tails."

"Maybe you should just quit the force now and spare us the whining," Judy muttered.

"Oh, would that I could…" Wilde grumbled.

Judy raised an eyebrow as she looked over to Wilde. "Why can't you?"

"Blame _Robin_ here," Wilde muttered.

"Robin?"

"Uh-huh," Wilde muttered. "Look at it this way; Robin's a top-of-the-line Labor. Bogo even called the Ingrowls 'not-quite-prototypes.' My job basically _requires_ me to know them like the back of my paw, right?"

"Uh-huh…?"

"So how would it look like for me – coming from a historically shifty species – to quit so soon after the Division forms, but _after_ I've seen how the Ingrowl works?"

Judy tilted her head. "I… don't know what you're getting at."

"Two words, Carrots; _industrial espionage_ ," said Wilde, pointing to Judy with his bottle of shampoo. "Even if the ZPD didn't think anything was weird about me leaving so soon, Inaba would think I was planning to sell what I knew about the Ingrowl to a rival company."

Judy's jaw dropped. "Isn't that a little paranoid?"

"A little paranoia's a good thing to have in this world," said Wilde, returning to applying shampoo. "Especially when it comes to the tech industry. Megafauna Enterprises practically has their own private police force to protect company assets."

"Oh come on," Judy chuckled. "Now you're pulling my leg."

"Oh, it's real," said Wilde, staring at his shampoo-laden rag for a second. "I've heard stuff about what they use some of their fancy Growl-Bears for. I.H.I.'s not _as_ uptight about company secrets as Megafauna, but I'm not taking any chances."

Judy began thrashing her rag up and down Unit 1's abdomen. "So you think it's easier to just kicked off the force?"

"Pretty much," said Wilde. "This way I'll have a reason for leaving that I.H.I. could believe."

 _[OST1]_

Judy's frenetic wiping slowed as a smile found its way onto her muzzle. "Well, you'd have to actually get fired first…"

Nick raised an eyebrow and as he turned to face Judy. "May we share the joke?"

"If you didn't want to do your job, why'd you talk down that pine marten?"

Wilde's ears folded back.

Judy continued, "Why'd you stick your neck out for me and that pine marten back in the Rainforest District if you just wanted to get out?"

Wilde's mouth opened, but nothing came out.

Judy smirked as she went in for the kill. "If you think I'm bad at doing my job, I'd say you're worse at _not_ not doing yours."

By now, Wilde had frozen stiff, utterly lost for words.

Judy's smirk grew. Today was looking up already.

However, the fox collected himself before she could hammer her point in further. "I think we're done with this section. Let's keep going lower."

* * *

"WHAT WAS THAT?" Judy yelled as she switched off her leaf blower.

Wilde switched off his own leaf blower so Judy could hear him. "I said they ought to make an automatic Labor-washer – like they do with cars."

"That'd help…" Judy muttered thoughtfully.

"The city'd never go for it though. They're cheapskates as it is."

Judy sighed. "You know, it wouldn't hurt for you to be a bit more positive."

"Well, no city can top Coop's burgers…."

"See, that wasn't so hard," said Judy, only half-jokingly.

"'Course, ol' Coop's not getting any younger. Dunno what'll happen when he retires…" Wilde switched his leafblower back on and resumed drying the Labor.

Judy rolled her eyes over the noise. "You must be a riot at parties…" she muttered.

* * *

"Hey, Carrots?" Wilde raised an eyebrow as he peered around the front of Unit 1's read to where Judy was waxing the other side. "Is it me, or have we not found _any_ dirt on this thing – even in the hard-to-reach places?"

"That's right!" Judy's ears shot up. "So all this time, Camazotz was… _Rrrrgh!_ "

"Gotta hand it to her, that bat had me going," Wilde murmured. "She'd make an interesting salesmammal – 'Buy these encyclopedias – or I'll kill you in your sleep'!"

"I shouldn't wonder," Judy grumbled. "You want to bring it up with her?"

" _Oh_ no!" Wilde shook his head. "Forwards get the risky stuff – and they have to listen to the Backup, so _you_ do it!"

"We only get the risky stuff because we're in the Labors," Judy huffed.

"Good point," Wilde remarked, that familiar smirk forming on his muzzle. "So why don't you talk to her from inside Robin?"

The mental image of Unit 1 talking down to the relatively tiny Chief Mechanic was enough to make Judy laugh at one Wilde's jokes for the first time.

Little did she know that the subject of their conversation was hanging from the rafters above them.

 _Please_ , Lucy Camazotz thought with a smirk. She knew the Ingrowls like the back of her wing. She'd find a way into the cockpit before Hopps could get a word in edgewise.

* * *

"You did good," remarked Earl Beaverbrook as he looked up at where Hopps and Wilde were still cleaning off Unit 1.

"Aw, I didn't really do all that much," murmured Benjamin Clawhauser. "All I did was talk to them."

"Well, you did _something_ right, eh?" said Beaverbrook, chewing on one of his popsicle sticks. "They were at each others throats just yesterday. _Now_ look at 'em! Wilde in particular. Didn't think you get to his creamy filling like that, eh?"

"Creamy filling?"

"Like a cannoli," said Beaverbrook. "You know, hard on the outside, soft and creamy on the inside?"

"Huh…" Clawhauser pondered, distracted briefly by the sound of his stomach growling. "Wait, how'd you figure that out?"

"Figure what out?"

"That Wilde was like that."

"Uh… Wild guess!" The popsicle stick fell out of Beaverbrook's mouth. "Heh-heh. _Wilde_ guess?" Beaverbrook edged away from the portly cheetah. "Might see how Lee and Hylander are doing. See ya!"

Clawhauser scratched his head. What was up with that little beaver?

Still, Ben was glad Hopps and Wilde were getting along better. It always felt better seeing everyone getting along.

Only question was, would these good times last?


	9. Robin of Foxley - Part VI

**Sorry if this chapter's rushed. I was in a hurry to get it up today because you see, this day, August 10, 2018, marks...**

 **(cue drumroll)**

 **HAPPY 30th ANNIVERSARY, PATLABOR** **!**

 **So yeah! I figured I had to get the lead out so that I could upload this chapter today!**

 **It's particularly notable because a new show, Patlabor EZY may be on the cards for the future! A producer has been announced, but there's a lot of details missing!**

 **In any case, it may prove to be a good time to get into Patlabor!**

* * *

"Not sure what happened," Captain Bogo remarked, idly drumming his hoof-fingers on his desk. "But I'll admit, Hopps and Wilde don't look set to murder each other anymore."

"I told you Clawhauser was an asset," purred Captain Polecatsky. "Before he went to you, he was practically Division 1's resident therapist."

"Well I'm not sure how long this will last," said Bogo, staring at the ceiling. "They say no plan survives contact with the enemy – and I don't like playing mind games with my officers."

"The mind games were on Lucy, not Clawhauser," said Polecatsky. "Still, you really think it could be that bad."

"I'm not one to take chances," huffed Bogo. "What's more, Lucy's main concern is the Labors; I'm not sure how good she is with their pilots."

The buffalo sighed and glanced out the window at the bay. "Still, I could see Clawhauser being an asset at a regular precinct. _Him_ I can get a handle on."

Polecatsky frowned. "You miss being out there, don't you?"

"At least in a regular precinct, I'd have some idea what I was doing," muttered Bogo.

"You've done well enough, given the givens," said the skunk. "And it's not like I don't feel out of place either."

"How so?"

"I was pretty much press-ganged into the ZPD." Polecatsky began stroking her tail. "It's been a few years, but I still feel like I don't quite fit in. Hell, maybe I should be glad this isn't a real precinct. Quentin caught Lorna – my eldest – watching a cop show past her bedtime a week ago. Now she keeps asking me things about police procedure that I still can't wrap my head around."

Bogo snorted. "Your daughter's lucky there aren't any TV shows about Zeeplabor Divisions if what they've done with regular precincts is any indication."

"The point is, I'm glad you're here, Adrian." Polecatsky smiled at her fellow Captain. "I feel like I'm learning more about actual policework just watching you."

"Thanks for the compliment." Bogo gave a pithy grin. "But if there's one lesson I've learned from regular Precincts, it's that the headaches never end."

* * *

Judy wasn't sure if the deployment-less day she'd had yesterday had been a good or a bad one. She hadn't talked with Joanna as much, but Clawhauser had been more than willing to chat with the rabbit while on standby.

The cheetah's verbal intervention had been a godsend for a dull day. Even Lieutenant Marvin Sanderson and Officer Wanda Hickory of Division 1 had popped in briefly to join the conversation yesterday. In hindsight, Judy wondered if they'd been there just for Clawhauser – which would make sense, seeing as Clawhauser was a former teammate of theirs.

Judy had tried asking Sanderson for some tips on piloting, but her brief chat with the sand cat Lieutenant had quickly shifted to the topic of the Ingrowls and how they compared to Division 1's CPL-97S Pythons.

"Our old Pythons just don't stack up now that you've got those things," Sanderson had sighed. "You don't know how lucky you are, rabbit."

Judy had tried not to look offended at the idea that her piloting ability was tied to the quality of her Labor – even if that wasn't what Sanderson was implying. For some reason, it reminded her of what Lee had said to Bogo.

Now that Judy thought of it, she hadn't seen that opossum anywhere during the little get-together. Lee rarely seemed to interact with the other SV2 officers, bar that suck-up Hylander following her around like a duckling after its mother. What _was_ it with Lee and her oh-I'm-too-cool-and-aloof-yet-I-know-everything act?! She was almost as bad as Wilde.

Naturally, as Judy thought about this the next day, she was amazed to find Wilde wiping down the monitors inside Unit 1's cockpit.

"What are _you_ doing here?!" the fox and the rabbit chorused.

"Aren't you usually fishing or finding some other way to waste time by now?" said Judy, raising an eyebrow.

"Hey, I'm not taking any chances with Camazotz looming large," said Wilde. "Plus, seeing as she's in charge of maintaining this bucket's vital systems, I'd rather stay on her good side."

"I've said this before," said Judy. "But aren't you being a bit paranoid?"

"I've got a marathon to catch tonight. I'd rather not give that bat an excuse to keep me here too long." Now it was Wilde's turn to raise an eyebrow. "Besides, if _I'm_ paranoid, then why are you holding those?"

Judy's nose began to twitched as she regarded the sponge and bucket of soap-water in her paws. "I-I just wanted to put a little more TLC into Robin is all," she stammered. "Might as well keep him looking neat and tidy!"

"Heh! Who needs a gun and a stun stick?" Wilde chuckled, reclining into the pilot's chair. "By the time you're through with Robin, he'd be so shiny he'd blind all those Labor-criminals into submission."

"Well-"

Just then, alarm bells began to ring.

 _"Attention please! Attention please! We have multiple 10-51Ls in the Upper Docklands. Division 2 is to mobilize immediately!"_

* * *

 _"Ten-fifty-one-L…"_ Beaverbrook's voice came over the radio as Division 2 motored out. _"That's… large intoxicated mammals, right?"_

 _"Good work, Beaverbrook!"_ chuckled Hylander's voice. _"We'll make an officer of you yet!"_

Judy just rolled her eyes.

 _"Elephants to be exact,"_ Bogo grumbled. _"Three elephants that got laid off a paint factory and got the bright idea to get drunk as lords and smash up their old workplace._

 _"Now remember, these aren't Labors you're dealing with this time. So you're now packing tranq pellets, not bullets. But even so,_ try _and de-escalate the situation before going crazy. And_ yes _, Wilde, that means you can put that mouth of yours to some use. Just try and stay behind Unit 1 this time._

 _"And like I said, use minimal force. This paint factory contains flammable chemicals. I don't want so much as a spark to come off those Labors!"_

* * *

The Upper Docklands weren't far from the SV2 building, closer to Zootopia Bisondale International Airport. Despite Zootopia's shift away from a service-based industry, there was a sizable industrial park in the area where this paint factory lay.

Once they arrived, the carrier payloads were raised, but Captain Bogo ordered Unit 2 to move in while Unit 1 stayed behind.

 _"Like I said, the chemicals in there are hazardous,"_ the Captain radioed from his slick-top cruiser. _"Unit 1 will remain on standby."_

Judy's face contorted into a scowl.

 _"Sorry, Hopps!"_ said Hylander as Unit 2 moved into the wide open doors of the South Wing of the paint factory, with Lee's command car situating itself just outside.

 _"So now what?"_ said Clawhauser.

 _"Cap'n said to stand by, so we just… stand by,"_ said Wilde. _"Hope Hylander makes this quick. I've got my marathon to think about."_

 _"Marathon?"_ said Clawhauser, before Judy heard the cheetah gasp. _"Oh-em-goodness! Are you a_ Doctor Time _fan?!"_

 _"Wh-what?!"_ said Wilde.

 _"It's the only big marathon on tonight!"_ Clawhauser giggled. _"I thought I was the only one here! Hey Judy, d'you watch it?"_

"Uh, _Doctor Time_? No…" Judy didn't want much TV to begin with. Still, she couldn't resist grinning at the idea that Wilde was a sci-fi buff.

 _"Uh, could we change the subj-"_

 _"I'd watch it too but I've got all the DVDs so I don't bother."_ Clawhauser obviously hadn't heard Wilde's false start. _"We should get together and watch it sometime!"_

 _"Uh… sure?"_ Wilde didn't sound so sure.

Judy pondered whether to butt in or not. She'd seen the odd stakeout scene on cop shows. Was this the Zeeplabor equivalent for one? She wished Sanderson and Hickory had given her more practical information.

In the end it was Captain Bogo who butted in. _"As interesting as this conversation is, could you please keep the lines open?!"_

Naturally it was just _then_ that Judy realized she had a question for Wilde.

With this in mind, Judy raised her cockpit so that her head poked out of Robin's top hatch, right below the neck – a feature meant to be used if the Ingrowl's cameras were disabled.

This done, Judy looked down to see that Wilde was leaning out of the open hatch of his command car.

"Hey Wilde!" Judy shouted in the fox's direction. "Why'd you become a cop in the first place?"

"I…" The fox seemed taken aback, but the usual smug look quickly returned to his face. "I had Labor certification and I guess one day I got dropped on my head and I figured 'why not try'? Second-worst mistake of my life…"

Bogo's voice buzzed through their comm. systems before Judy could press the fox further. _"We've just had reports of a fourth drunking elephant making his way into the North Wing of the factory. Unit 1, move in."_

"Yes, sir." Judy made Robin step off the trailer and dash around the side of the plant to the North Wing.

Just then, Wilde's voice broke through her comlink. _"Whoa, hey, Carrots! Remember what Bogo said. We can't go in there guns-a-blazing!"_

"Well, what _should_ we do?!" Judy huffed.

 _"Just… try talking him down_ before _going crazy, okay?"_

"Wait, you want _me_ to talk to him?"

 _"Well, why not?"_

* * *

When they finally passed through the large doors at the North side of the factory, they immediately saw an elephant just slumped against a large vat that Judy assumed contained paint.

"Sir? Hello?" said Judy, glancing at the pachyderm.

On closer inspection, the elephant's eyes were closed, and he was audibly snoring.

Wilde leaned out of his command car's top hatch, shaking his head. "He's in a stupor."

"What do we do?" said Judy. "We can't just leave him here."

"Think you could carry him out?" said Wilde.

"I'll try," said Judy, making Robin reach for the elephant's arm, preparing to hoist him over its shoulder.

But to Judy's surprise, the elephant suddenly pulled her in tightly and began grappling with her. The rabbit had to retract Unit 1's cockpit as the stench of cheap beer emanated from under the elephant's trunk.

"Oh, Roxanne!" the elephant muttered without opening his eyes as he tightly wrapped his thick arms around the Ingrowl. "I knew y'd come back! Firsht they lay me off, then the Shlammers blow the sheashon. I needed you sho bad!"

Wilde chuckled in spite of himself.

"This isn't funny, Wilde!" Judy groaned as she tried to wrangle the Zeeplabor free. "How do I get him off me?!"

"Uh, Captain?" Wilde said into his comms system, trying in vain to hold back laughter. "Suspect has fallen asleep but is still lucid enough to cuddle Unit 1 like a stuffed toy. How do we proceed, over?"

 _"Wilde, please tell me I misheard that,"_ Bogo groaned. _"Did you seriously just tell me that the suspect is cuddling Unit 1 like a stuffed toy?"_

"Well, I was gonna say like a sex doll, but I thought you'd want me to keep things professional."

 _"Wilde…!"_ the cape buffalo growled.

Suddenly, there was a loud crash as the wall on the opposite side of the room collapsed.

There, stepping through the rubble, was an Ushii Bullfrog, painted a bright yellow.

An off-key voice sang through the newcomer's loudspeakers. _"HEEEEEEERE I come to save the_ – HIC! – _DAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYY!"_

Nick just groaned as he buried his head in his hands.

* * *

 **Species Names & Explanations:**

Marvin Sanderson: Sand Cat (Felis margarita)

Wanda Hickory: Prevost's Squirrel (Callosciurus prevostii)


	10. Robin of Foxley - Part VII

**BACKGROUND MUSIC:**

1) Kenji Kawai - "Approach" - from _Mobile Suit Gundam 00_

2) Kenji Kawai - "Ready to Roll" ("Kidou Junbi Yoshi") - from _Earth Defense Dai-Guard_

3) Disney Peaceful Piano - "Try Everything" (original by Shakira)

4) Kenji Kawai - "Mocking in Summer" - from _Patlabor: The Movie_

PV) Kenji Kawai - "Scramble!" - from _Patlabor: The Mobile Police_ TV series

* * *

 _[OST1]_

"I'll show thoshe maniacsh in the ZPD how to _really_ take 'em down!" slurred the genet piloting the incoming Bullfrog.

"Cap'n, we have a problem," Wilde said into his receiver.

 _"What is it now?!"_ growled Captain Bogo.

"We now have a wannabe vigilante in a Bullfrog on the scene. Ten-to-one he's DWI."

"What _is_ it with drunks today?!" groaned Judy, just managing to pull herself free of the inebriated elephant.

Nick spoke a mile a minute as he lowered himself back into his car and reversed out of the Bullfrog's path. "It's the middle of a heat wave, City Hall's announced a tax hike, and the Slammers are blowing their postseason chances like there's no tomorrow. _Everyone_ 's drowning their sorrows!"

"Don't worry, Roxanne!" The elephant suddenly got up and put himself between Robin and the interloper. "I'll protect you!"

"Sir, please!" Judy tried to reason through her loudspeakers while pulling the elephant back. "Wilde, help!"

"Uh…" Wilde glanced nervously from the Bullfrog to the elephant and back. "Can't we just talk about this?" he finally said through his car's speakers.

"YAAAAAARGH!" The Bullfrog's pilot suddenly charged at the elephant. Robin quickly threw the pachyderm down behind her and caught the renegade Bullfrog's punch with one hand.

"Roxanne!" The elephant suddenly tried to charge around Robin, but the taller Ingrowl swung its left arm around and gave the elephant a stiff-arm, still holding the Bullfrog's arm with its right hand.

"Wilde…!" Judy growled as she tried to hold the two inebriated combatants apart.

Nick glanced between the three, unsure how to handle two nutjobs at once. "C-can I ask you both to just settle down?"

"Fergeddit!" both drunks yelled.

Wilde facepalmed before talking into his radio. "Captain, if you wanna send us some backup, now's the time!"

 _"Negative,"_ said Bogo. _"Hylander has his hands full as it is, and Division 1's off-duty."_

The Bullfrog tried grabbing at Unit 1 with its free arm and pulling it down, but just then, the elephant grabbed hold of Robin with his trunk and pushing the Ingrowl onto the Bullfrog, knocking them both down like dominoes.

"Shorry, Roxanne!" said the elephant as he groggily stood up.

"I'm not Roxanne!" Judy snapped as she quickly made Unit 1 stand up.

"Carrots!" Wilde yelled into his comm. system. "You can tranq him now!"

"Okay…!" Unit 1 took out its pellet gun and was about to aim it at the elephant when all of a sudden, the Ingrowl fell over as the Bullfrog pulled its leg back.

This caused Robin's leg to abruptly kick upward and catch the elephant in the chin. The pachyderm stumbled backward, right into the side of one of the paint vats, and he slumped over, unconscious.

"Well, one down, one to go…" said Wilde, poking his head out of the command car's hatch before switching on his loudspeakers. "Okay, come on, buddy! Let's just talk about this!"

"Nuh-uh!" said the genet. "You guysh are wrecking the plashe up ash bad ash he wash! I'll show you! I'll show you all!"

* * *

"Can I just get you to- _GAH!_ Calm down, please!" Howard Hylander groaned as he made Unit 2 dodge paint cans being thrown by the unruly elephants he had been sent to pacify.

Hylander had managed to tranq one of the elephants, but the remaining two were putting up a fierce fight.

"I repeat!" Lee yelled through her command car's speakers as she peeked out the roof of her car. "If you do not settle down _immediately_ , we will have to use force!"

"Shaddap!" yelled one of the elephants, using his trunk to hurl a pipe at the Ingrowl, knocking its tranq gun out of its hand.

"Right!" Hylander growled as he made Unit 2 pull out its stun stick. "It seems I shall have to be _rude_!"

"Hylander, no!" Lee groaned as Unit 2 advanced on the elephants.

Ten seconds later Unit 2 was flat on its back as one of the elephant began banging its fists on it.

Lee slammed her face into the roof of her car. What had she done to deserve this?!

* * *

"I'll show you!" the genet yelled as the Bullfrog threw a punch.

Judy dodged. "You're only making things worse for yourself!" she exclaimed through her speakers.

"Listen to her!" Nick said through his.

" _Shaddap, fox!_ Why won't anyone take me sherioushly?!" the genet roared, delivering a blow to Robin's chest-mounted bull-bars.

"Stop or I'll shoot!" Judy yelled, pointing her tranq gun at the rogue Labor.

"Carrots, it only shoots tranq pellets!" said Nick, having neglected to turn off his loudspeakers.

In her cockpit, Judy brought her palm to her face. "He didn't know that, Wilde!"

"Oh…" Nick felt stupid. _Real_ stupid.

The genet was livid. "YOU THINK I'M STUPID, DO YA?! YOU THINK I'M STUPID?!"

Judy made Robin take a few steps back. " _Now_ what are we supposed to do?!"

"Paint vat! Paint vat!" Wilde snapped into his receiver. Judy immediately took a step forward, away from the vat of paint behind her.

While she was distracted, the Bullfrog tackled the Ingrowl into the side of the vat, punching her repeatedly until the vat ruptured, sending a cascade of magenta paint pouring onto the Zeeplabor. Judy abruptly pushed herself upright. The surprised genet pulled the Bullfrog back, causing it to stumble into another vat, causing a jet of fluorescent green paint to gush in Robin's direction.

"I KNOW WHAT I'M DOIN'!" the genet yelled, hurling a palette full of plastic paint buckets at the Labor. Judy pulled up her shield, but wasn't quite fast enough to prevent the buckets from rupturing against it, sending a wave of bright orange headed her way.

Nick was forced to close his command car's hatch to shield himself from the multicolored tsunami.

Once the fox was sure the paint storm had subsided, he noticed that his live feed from Robin's main camera was showing a blank screen. Some of the paint must have covered it up.

Cautiously, he peered out of the top hatch of his car and took in the sight of the Ingrowl, which now looked like it had been redecorated by Jackson Molelock. Bright orange covered the machine's face and left arm. Bright pink covered the back and right arm. Bright green covered the legs. The chest contained a mixture of all three colors.

Nick gawked in disbelief at the spectacle as Judy raised her cockpit out of the upper hatch so she could see properly.

There was a moment of silence as the partners took in the splattered Labor, knowing what the Animazon Rule meant they would have to do now.

"You painted my Robin…" Judy hissed through the machine's loudspeakers. "You just painted my Robin…!"

"Farewell, sweet marathon," Nick muttered darkly. "May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest."

The fox then reached for his receiver. "Carrots, if we want to get out of painting duty at a slightly less ungodly hour, you're gonna have to lure this guy out of here."

"Okay, how?"

"Carrots, you're a small annoying creature."

"HEY!"

"Right now, that's a compliment. This guy's got major anger issues. _Use that_."

 _[OST2]_

Judy took a deep breath in. "Okay…"

She then carefully positioned the paint-spattered Unit 1 between the Bullfrog and the door, putting as much distance between them as she could.

"What're ya doin' now?!" yelled the genet.

"You know, you _really_ aren't helping your case right now." Judy made sure her loudspeakers were switched on. "If we're maniacs, what does that make you?"

" _Shaddap_!" yelled the genet as the Bullfrog surged forward.

Judy pulled back. Luckily for her, the Ingrowl was the faster runner, so the Bullfrog just swiped at thin air.

By now, Robin was at the massive doors that led out into the factory parking lot.

"You can't shay that to me!" the genet yelled. "You can't point the finger at me for thish!"

Just then, an idea occurred to Judy, and she activated the Ingrowl's virtual reality gloves. These control systems were meant to assist in delicate operations – operative word being _meant_ to.

"I've only got _one_ finger for you!" Judy crowed, raising the machine's middle finger, hoping beyond hope that word of this incident never reached her mother.

"WHY YOOOOUUUUUUUU!" The Bullfrog charged forward. Robin sidestepped the drunkard's machine again, and it tumbled into the parking lot. Judy quickly placed herself between the enemy Labor and the factory doors, so that the genet couldn't head back into the factory.

This done, Judy went on the offensive, charging and grappling with the Bullfrog ad pushing it even further away from the doors.

"That's it! That's it! You've got it!" said Nick, driving out the factory.

The Bullfrog drew back and charged again, throwing a punch. Judy dodged and jammed the Ingrowl's elbow into the Bullfrog's abdomen, causing it to stumble.

"No, wait! Wait for a good hit!" barked Nick. "Just keep him swinging until you can stick 'im! Try and get him to turn his back on you!"

Judy oblighed, keeping Robin close enough to entice the genet into throwing punches, yet distant enough that she could easily dodge them with ease.

"Yes! Yes! That's it!" Nick laughed triumphantly at the Bullfrog's drunken swings and their failure to connect. "Pretty little bunny ballerina!"

"I resent that- _ah_!"

The genet had taken advantage of Judy's brief distraction and plowed into Robin, keeping the Zeeplabor down.

Judy reacted quickly though, pulling out her tranq gun and firing two shots at the cockpit. She knew that the pellets wouldn't damage the Labor, but seeing the pale green pellets splatter over the windshield showed her that her gambit had worked.

"Nice!" Nick muttered. Now the genet was blinded, giving Judy enough time to bring Robing to its feet.

"You stupid-" the Bullfrog's airplane-like canopy opened up, but by that time, Unit 1 had swung around to the rear of the opposing Labor and pulled out its stun stick.

"Yes, that's it! Stick 'im!" Nick cackled.

The genet tried to swivel around to deliver another blow, but it was too late; Judy had embedded the baton deep into the Bullfrog's back. Smoke started emit from its ruptured batteries, and Robin pushed the enemy machine to the ground.

"I did it…" Judy muttered. "I did it!"

Nick ran over to the Bullfrog's open cockpit and pulled out the inebriated genet, who was grappling at the controls to no avail. "You…" the fox panted. "You… are under… arrest!"

"Fuzzin' fox…" the genet hissed.

After escorting the genet to his command car, Nick sighed and collapsed against the side of the vehicle.

 _"Unit 1! What's going on there?!"_ Bogo's voice came over the radio.

"Captain…" Judy panted, triumph edging into her voice. "Both the elephant and the rogue Bullfrog are down for the count. The Bullfrog's pilot is now in Officer Wilde's custody and the elephant's been knocked out."

 _"Good work."_ Bogo's voice was jarringly mirthless. _"Lee reports that all three elephants in the other wind of the factory are tranquilized. Bring the one near you over here in case he needs medical treatment, then help Hylander bring his out. Has your machine taken any damage?"_

Judy and Nick looked over Robin's multicolored, splattered exterior.

"J-just cosmetic, sir…" Judy muttered.

 _"I see… Then you can bring it up with Camazotz when we get back."_

Nick and Judy groaned.

* * *

From the roof of a warehouse a safe distance from the paint factory, a markhor had been observing the skirmish. Now, he took his hooves off his high-spec video camera, and called a number on his cell phone.

"Mr. Bright? It's Screwney. I've just taken some of that Ingrowl footage you requested. I've got Unit 222 entering the factory, and Unit 221 engaging and disabling a Bullfrog just outside it. Any more requests?"

 _"Try and get some of them heading back to their carriers,"_ came a young voice at the other end. _"Not sure what I can do with that, but the more snaps you get of them, the better. You get either of the pilots' species?"_

"Just 221's. It's either a rabbit or a hare. Female either way."

 _"Oooh! I thought it'd be a predator!"_ Mr. Bright seemed pleased at the revelation. _"Just get that last bit of footage. See if you can get some of both Labors' pilots so we can make a better guess of their species. Then bring it all home and you'll have earned that paycheck of yours, my twirly-horned amigo!"_

* * *

 _[OST3]_

"So… Captain?"

"Yes, Clawhauser?" Bogo walked up to the cheetah, who was now leaning against the side of his Labor-carrier, glancing up at Unit 1.

"D'you think those two are better now?"

"Hard to say," Bogo sighed. "Like I always say, the headaches never end."

"Oh…" Clawhauser seemed to deflate.

"Ah, don't sweat it!" Clawhauser jumped as Lucy Camazotz fluttered down onto the carrier's roof. "He's just saying Zootopia wasn't built in a day. It's just a matter of moving forward, and those two seem to be doing it well enough."

"That's one way of looking at it," said Bogo. "I get the feeling this won't be the biggest headache I have to deal with for now…"

The buffalo glanced up to where Nick and Judy were applying a new coat of paint to Robin.

"I hope they lock that genet up and throw away the key," grumbled Judy, taking a quick break from spraying black paint on the Ingrowl's shoulder.

"Hopefully next time we'll get deployed to Lower Sahara," Nick said as he used his own sprayer. "We could get some time in at the beach."

Judy thought for a bit, then shook her head. "Knowing Camazotz, she'd have us getting sand out of his joints."

"Touché," muttered Nick.

"They ought to just ban Labors from paint factories," Judy grumbled. Just then, a thought popped into her head. "Have you had experience with Labors?"

"Some… Worked with I.H.I. for a bit," Nick muttered under his breath.

"Oh?"

"Yeah, apparently my work there made me qualified enough that they forwarded me a new recruitment package for the ZPD's new Labor division."

"What'd you do at I.H.I.?

"Eh, some test work…"

Judy's eyes bulged. "You were a test pilot?!"

"Technically." Nick shrugged. "Most of what I did was just making sure joints and stuff did as they were told. I didn't do much of the fancy stuff like frame integrity testing."

"Okay…" Judy stared at the slick new coat of black paint. "You never told me what made you join the police…"

Nick sighed. "I made mistakes, okay?!"

 _[_ _OST4_ _]_

The fox's outburst startled Judy. She then realized that there was still so much she didn't know about Nick Wilde – and now she doubted he'd ever willingly tell her about it.

This fox – who her life depended on in the field – was a complete enigma to her.

* * *

From the catwalk leading to the offices, Virginia Lee Foxape cast a leery eye over the rabbit as she stared at the fox.

That rabbit had gotten lucky. Sure, she'd improved since Okavango Road, but Lee knew her emotional approach would get the better of her. Sooner or later, Lee would show what she could do…

* * *

"Looks like Bogo's being kept busy."

"Just as long as he _stays_ busy; that's what matters!"

"You still think he could get in our way?"

"You're the one saying we need to plan for every eventuality."

"Fair enough…"

"So, when do we move forward?"

"Not just yet. I'm still putting things together."

"Well, it had better be worth it!"

"Oh, it will. It may take a while, but once the dust settles, this town will be eating out of our hands!"

* * *

 **THIS IS AN AU, BUT IN TEN YEARS, WHO KNOWS…?**

 _[OST-PV]_

 **NEXT TIME:**

 **Judy:** " _RRRGH!_ I can't _stand_ it!"

 **Nick:** "Ooh boy… What'd I do now?"

 **Judy:** "Not you, _Lee_! What'll it take to get some _respect_ from her?!"

 **Lee:** "I just don't think you're cut out to be a Zeeplabor pilot. You're letting your ego get in the way of your job."

 **Judy:** "Oh, gimme a break! Like _you_ don't have an ulterior motive!"

 **Nick:** "Uh, ladies…!"

 **Lee:** "Well then, why don't you put your money where your muzzle is?"

 **Judy:** "What were you thinking?"

 **Nick:** "Uh…"

 **Lee:** "You and me, in Labors – then we can settle it once and for all!"

 **Judy:** "You're on!"

 **Nick:** "Seriously?!"

 **Hylander:** "Back off, Wilde! This is an affair of honor!"

 **Nick:** "Oh, for the love of…!"

 **Judy:** "On the next _Zeeplabor_ ; 'Playing the Possum!' _Target: Locked On!_ "

* * *

Species Names & Explanations

Screwney: Bukharan Markhor (Capra falconeri heptneri) - One look at a markhor's horns should tell you how Screwney got his name.

* * *

LABOR FILES:

UL-44 Bullfrog

Model Number: UL-44

Code name: Bullfrog

Use: Construction Labor

Manufacturer: Ushii Heavy Industries

Height: 6.21 meters

Width: 4.96 meters

Weight:

Standard: 7.83 metric tons

Full: 8.21 metric tons

Armour: Fiber reinforced material (aluminum/steel)

Maximum lifting capacity: 4.2 metric tons

Patlaboranalogue: HL-97 Bulldog

Special Notes:

Can perform underwater work up to 10 meters

FL-01 Bumpacrop

Model Number: FL-01

Code name: Bumpacrop

Use: Agricultural Labor

Manufacturer: Fiverson Agricultural Equipment

Height: 7.13 meters

Width: 4.65 meters

Weight:

Standard: 6.98 metric tons

Full: 7.66 metric tons

Armour: Fiber-reinforced plastic & aluminum

Maximum lifting capacity: 1.5 metric tons.

 _Patlabor_ analogue: EL-01 Housaku

Known Pilots:

\- Stuart Hopps

\- Stuart Hopps Jr.

\- Judy Hopps

Special notes:

\- Has seen increased use in farming locales like Bunnyburrow.

\- Can be equipped with a variety of attachments to suit different farming needs (e.g. a combine-harvester or spike roller attachment on the frontal abdomen)

* * *

 **Ushii Heavy Industries is a play on the Patlabor company Hishii Heavy Industries, and the Japanese word for "bull".**

 **Similarly, Fiverson Agricultural Equipment is a reference to Fiver, the rabbit character from Watership Down.**

 **The Bumpacrop's name is (of course) a play on the phrase "bumper crop," which is roughly what "Housaku" - the name of the Bumpacrop's Patlabor analogue - translates to.**

 **I lament that I've not found that many excuses to use Zootopia soundtracks in this work...**

 **Now that this episode is over, I've got good news and bad news.**

 **The bad news is, since it's possible that IRL concerns may delay me, it'll be a while before the next episode comes (I'll still post the Labor Files entry for this episode though).**

 **The good news is, this delay is also because I plan to write the next episode all in one go. I won't actually upload bits of it until I finish the whole thing. While there'll be a longer time until the next upload, there'll (hopefully) be shorter, more regular times in between the uploading of each part! Plus, while I'm uploading episode 3, I might get a jump on writing episode 4, so hopefully there'll be less of a gap between episodes in future!**

 **One last note: You may have noticed that I've collapsed the "Labor Files" segments into the ends of each chapter. I used to have them between "episodes", but a reviewer pointed out that having chapters without story content violated FFN rules, so I'm trying out this arrangement instead. If you find it clutters things up too much, or you have an alternative solution, just let me know.**


	11. Playing the Possum - Part I

**Reports of my demise were greatly exaggerated.**

 **Hopefully from now on we'll see more regular updates than with the last two episodes. That's one payoff of this last hiatus - I was able to go through this next episode in one fell swoop!**

* * *

Judy hated waiting in the cab of Unit 1's carrier. She'd gotten tired of the fact that a mammal of her size could only see the dashboard, and of how uncomfortable it felt being pushed back into a seat sized for mammals many times her size. Clawhauser had suggested – unironically – getting a booster seat for Judy to sit in, but Judy had quickly vetoed the idea. Frith only knew what Nick would say if he'd gotten wind of the proposal.

Anyway, the seat itself wasn't the problem right now. It was the fact that despite having its lights and siren on, the carrier wasn't moving an inch in the bumper-to-bumper Sahara Square traffic.

So Judy tried to pass the time by getting info on the perps Division 2 had been sent to deal with. "So what's the deal with the Inner Wild Front anyway?"

Behind the wheel, Clawhauser shrugged. "Couldn't tell you everything. All I know is they think civilized life is wrong, but I don't really know what they say about why."

 _"I'm not surprised – even they can't figure it out."_ Captain Bogo chimed in through the radio. _"The IWF's a decentralized movement – no two factions are alike. The only thing they can agree on is that 'the system' is so corrupt that we should just give up and go back to our wild ways. But they can't agree on why that is or what to do about it. Some of them want to just sit and wait until we drop Pax Zootopia and start eating each other again. Others can't wait that long."_

"But why Mystic Springs Oasis?" said Clawhauser. "From what I hear, they're all about 'back to nature.'"

 _"Who knows?"_ said Bogo. _"Maybe he thinks they're not 'back to nature' enough, or maybe he's got a grudge against the place."_

Judy's nose twitched. "How does one mammal's grudge factor into the IWF's agenda?"

 _"With terrorist groups, it's not unusual for their agenda to change at the drop of a hat,"_ said Bogo. _"With decentralized groups like the IWF, it's not so surprising that one random idiot goes on a rampage for the hell of it, using the IWF flag as an excuse."_

Lee's voice broke through the radio, her voice edged with impatience. _"Hylander's already engaged the suspect. How long will it be before Unit 1 gets here?"_

"We're not that far from you," said Clawhauser. "We just need to get through this traffic."

* * *

"Well, hurry," Lee shouted into her command car's receiver. Hylander was having his fair share of problems dealing with the Ushii UL-45 Hareacles H21 that the IWF terrorist had stolen from the Climate Wall Refurbishment Project.

Now Hylander in Unit 2 and the tree pangolin in the stolen Labor were grappling next to the wall of Mystic Springs Oasis.

"Can't I use my revolver cannon?" grunted Hylander as Unit 2 took a step back.

"Not until you can get him into the open," said Lee. "Street's too narrow."

"Confound it," the hyrax grumbled. "I'm not so good with close-quarters – that's Hopps' forte."

"Well, Hopps isn't here," Lee growled. "Just get this lunatic out of here and relocate things to Sahel Creek Park – they've already evacuated there."

"I'm trying, ma'am, I'm trying!" Hylander tried charging the Hareacles.

Like the Bullfrog – which came from the same company – the Hareacles was a squat, bipedal machine with three-fingered hands and no real head. Unlike the Bullfrog, however, the Hareacles had an-all metal cockpit with a small viewport – most of the pilot's vision came from cameras – and the forearms were slim, and connected to shoulders with holes cut into them to reduce weight.

Now, this Hareacles, painted fluorescent green, grabbed Unit 2 and began engaging in a shoving match with it.

"Hylander, your footing," Lee shouted. "Adjust your unit's footing!"

Hylander hadn't properly braced his Labor for the shoving match, and the Ingrowl fell backward through the crumbling wall behind it.

"Ribbons," Lee seethed.

* * *

 _"Can't you take Dune Street?"_ said Bogo through the radio.

"T-too narrow, sir," said Clawhauser. "And I don't think I could make that tight a turn."

 _"Right, Unit 1, deck-up."_

"What, _now_ , sir?" Clawhauser spluttered.

 _"_ Now _, Clawhauser,"_ said Bogo. _"Hopps can walk the rest of the way."_

 _"Wouldn't City Hall get mad at us?"_ Nick's voice butted in. _"More than usual?"_

 _"It'll be worse if we don't put that thing down,"_ said Bogo. _"Now, get to it!"_

"Y-yes, sir," stammered Clawhauser.

Judy immediately dashed into Robin, and Clawhauser began raising the payload bay.

Behind the carrier, Nick backed his command car onto the sidewalk, making sure his lights and siren were still on, and spoke through his car's loudspeakers. "Can I ask you folks to please move along? It's just that if my friend here stepped on you, it'd mean a _lot_ of paperwork for us."

Many of the mammals on the sidewalk ducked into nearby buildings as Unit 1 stepped off the trailer and began tiptoeing around pedestrians and cars onto Dune Street while Nick's command car cleared a path in front of it.

"Alright, let's have some room, mammals," said Nick through his loudspeakers. "You over there, I'm pretty sure now's not a good time for group selfies."

As two zebras, a bison, and a wildebeest got out of the road, glaring at Nick as the wildebeest lowered his selfie stick, Judy couldn't help but wonder what possessed mammals to take selfies in front of dangerous situations involving Labors.

Nick kept shouting. "That's it. Clear the way. Defer! Defer! Defer to the Lord High Labor Executioner! Give the bunny some room for those big feet of hers."

"I resent that," said Judy.

"Not your big feet, Robin's."

Judy scowled. "Very funny."

Nick made no indication he was taking this any more seriously. "Hey, I'd say you're doing alright. _With catlike tread, upon your prey you steal-_ "

"What have I said about Gilbear and Sowllivan songs?" Judy snapped.

Judy couldn't see Nick's smirk, but she could practically hear it. "You said you'd had enough _HMS Pinafur_ songs. This was _The Pirates of Pawzance_."

The sound of Captain Bogo clearing his throat cut off Judy's retort. _"Are you two aware that you both have your loudspeakers on?"_

Judy bit her tongue, making a mental note to have a word with Joanna about Robin's external sound systems.

It wasn't long before Unit 1 made it to Mystic Springs Oasis' outer wall. Now the Hareacles was inside the building's courtyard, slamming Unit 2 face-first into one of the buildings, ripping it open.

Nick pulled his command car up beside Lee's before poking his head out of the top hatch. "Why isn't Blunderbuss fighting back?"

"I can't reach him," Lee explained. "I think he's unconscious."

"I'll take care of him," said Judy, pulling out Robin's stun stick.

"Gimme a sec," said Nick, patching his receiver to his loudspeakers. "Hey, you in the Hareacles! Can't we talk about this?"

"No," barked the pangolin in the Hareacles.

"Let's be real for a second," said Nick. "What's this place ever done to you?"

"They're a bunch of sellouts!" yelled the pangolin. "This city needs to burn. I'll start with them!"

"Honey isn't catching this fly, Nick," said Judy, making Robin step into the courtyard through the hole in the wall. "Time for vinegar." The rabbit switched on her loudspeakers. "Step out of your Labor now or… or… or…"

[OST]

Judy had noticed a zebra, a hippo, and a bear fleeing the scuffle. But it was what Judy _didn't_ see that caught her attention.

"C-Captain Bogo," she stammered into her comms system.

 _"What is it, Hopps?"_

"W-we've got streakers on the scene!"

 _"Streakers? What the hell are you talking about?"_

"There are naked mammals – running all over the premises." Judy was now seeing mammals of various species milling about the courtyard, all stark naked.

"She means MSO members, sir," said Nick. "Carrots, Mystic Springs Oasis is a naturalist club; they think clothes are unnatural."

"But-but isn't this indecent exposure?" said Judy.

 _"MSO falls under a legal loophole,"_ said Bogo. _"Forget about the naked animals. Just take that Labor down."_

"Y-yes, sir," said Judy, switching her loudspeakers back on. "Attention hair-naked- _Hareacles_ pilot! Cease and disrobe- _desist!_ Open your cockpit- er, _hatch_ and come out with your paws up or we'll have to use fuzz- _force_!"

Nick rolled his eyes. No way was she that sheltered…

Just then, the fox noticed a nude peccary frantically running into the part of the building where the Hareacles had rammed Unit 2's head into the second floor.

"Hang on, we've got a straggler," Nick reported into his radio. "I'll get him out."

Nick then got out of the car and dashed into the building after the peccary, following him into a room right below where Unit 2's head and torso lay. The room's walls were lined with shelves containing colored vials and beakers.

Nick tried to grab the porcine by the hand. "If you haven't noticed, there's a Labor that could-"

"No way," said the peccary, pulling his hoof back. "I gotta make sure my experiment's safe."

Just then, a naked yak with impressively long head-fur strolled in, seemingly oblivious to the chaos around him.

"Aw, Carl," he chuckled. "You haven't been doing that stuff again, have ya?"

"Aw, gimme a break, Yax," the peccary moaned.

"Uh, listen, you guys," said Nick, gesturing to the window where Unit 2's abdomen and legs blocked the view. "We have to _go_ -"

At that moment, the Hareacles's speakers sounded out. "Take another step and you end up like your friend here!"

Outside, the Hareacles banged its fist on Unit 2's back for emphasis, which caused the room's ceiling to collapse. Jars of fluid smashed all around the three mammals inside.

* * *

"Nick!" Judy gasped. "Nick, are you there? Come in, Nick!"

A voice coughed on the other end. _"I-I'm alright, Carrots. I guess the room didn't collapse all the way. We're a bit banged up, but nothing serious."_

Judy sighed in relief. "Just get out of- _ah!_ "

Robin dodged an attempt by the Hareacles to tackle it, then pointed the stun stick at it in defiance.

"He's not giving up," said Judy. "You know your Labors. Where do I stick him?"

 _"Oh, you needn't worry, Carrots!"_ Nick's voice suddenly became off-kilter. " _No matter how thick the armor, you have but to pierce it!"_

"What?"

 _"Wilde, could you answer Hopps' question?"_ Bogo growled through the radio.

"Nick, is that you?" Judy wasn't sure what was going on.

 _"Oh, sure!"_ That _was_ Nick's voice, but it didn't _sound_ like Nick. _"Nicholas Wilde – do not forget this name!"_

Judy became concerned. "Uh, Nick? You didn't get hit on the head, did you?"

Then a new, cheerful voice broke in. _"Oh, your fox friend's alright. I think the fumes from Carl's 'experiments' just made him kinda wonky."_

 _"What th- who is this?"_ Bogo demanded. _"What's going on?!"_

 _"Oh, my name's Yax. I'm with the club,"_ the new voice chuckled. _"Don't worry, I'll get your friend outta here."_

 _"Please do,"_ sighed Bogo. _"Lee, back Hopps up."_

"Understood sir," said Lee from her command car.

 _"Oh, I'm fine, Cap'n,"_ said Nick. _"I'm gonna scrub these fumes from the face of the earth!"_

Judy made Robin take a few steps back as she turned on her loudspeaker. "Please, sir, stop and think about what you're doing. This isn't right!"

 _"I should've been the one to fill your dark soul with RIIIIIIIIIIIGHT!"_ Nick's voice squawked in.

"Shut up!" yelled the pangolin. "These mammals have lied to us all, promising a return to nature. They deserve to suffer!"

"Hopps, what are you doing?!" snapped Lee.

"I'm buying time for Nick and the others to get out," said Judy.

"If the suspect has time to move, he could attack another part of the building," Lee noted.

"You won't trick me," said the pangolin. "I'm willing to die for my freedom."

"No one has to die here!" Judy pulled her machine forward, yanking the Hareacles away from the building and into the center of the courtyard.

"You're taking too long," said Lee. "Get behind him and use the stun-stick."

"I have to get behind him, first." Judy dodged a swipe from the Hareacles as she backed up.

 _"HADOUKEN! SONIC BOOM!"_ Nick's voice yelled.

"You don't have to rough up the Labor," said Lee. "Just get behind him."

"I'm trying," Judy seethed as she dodged another swipe.

"Well, try harder," Lee growled.

Judy caught a glimpse of a yak behind the Hareacles, having slung Nick over his shoulder and dragging a groggy peccary out by the hand.

"Ah, Carrots," Nick piped up, holding up a tomato. "Shall I give you this pear?"

"Hang on." Judy discarded the stun stick and caught one of the Hareacles' punches and promptly sent flung terrorist's Labor over Robin's shoulder, sending it back out the hole in the courtyard wall.

"Hopps, what-"

"I'm relocating the conflict," said Judy. "I can still lure him to Sahel Creek Park."

"Hopps, you don't need this," Lee snapped. "Just finish him!"

 _"Die before even seeing your precious moon, GX!"_ the drugged Nick's voice slipped in.

 _"Lee, give Hopps room to breathe,"_ ordered Bogo. _"Hopps, just put an end to this."_

"Roger," Judy growled as she picked up Robin's stun stick, put it back behind her shield, and climbed back over the ruined wall to where the Hareacles was getting back up.

Before the pangolin could brace his stolen Labor, Judy launched Robin at it, giving her opponent a clothesline that sent it skittering down the block toward Sahel Creek Park. Judy promptly dashed past it and skidded to a halt in the park itself.

"Is this range safe for firearms?" she asked.

"It should be, but-"

"Good."

Judy dropped her baton and drew Robin's revolver cannon as the metal firing visor slid over Robin's Plexiglas visor.

"Hopps, what are you doing?!" Lee hissed.

"If I take out his legs, I can get up close and use the stun-stick," Judy explained.

"You stand a better chance up close," Lee groaned.

 _"VOL-TEK-KAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-"_

 _"Would someone_ please _shut off Wilde's mic?!"_ yelled Bogo.

 _"No need to, sir,"_ piped up Beaverbrook. _"I think he broke it just then."_

Before the Hareacles could get up, Judy fired three shots. One missed its mark and went straight into the ground. The other two ripped through the Hareacles' legs, and the Labor collapsed, hydraulic fluid spewing from its knees.

"Okay," Judy sighed as Robin picked up its stun-stick and nonchalantly walked up to the prostrate Labor, inserting the stun stick into its back.

"That wasn't so hard now, was it?" Judy huffed.

* * *

 **BACKGROUND MUSIC:**

1) Micheal Giacchino - "The Naturalist" - from _Zootopia_


	12. Playing the Possum - Part II

"At any rate," said Lee. "It's beyond obvious that Officer Hopps conducted herself in an improper and unprofessional manner yesterday."

"Captain." Judy gave a sidelong glare at the opossum before turning back to Captain Bogo. "I took down the bad guy; that's my job."

Behind the two, Captain Polecatsky quietly sipped some coffee at her desk, taking in the sight of Bogo sitting behind his, nervously glancing from one to the other of his subordinates.

Lee's prehensile tail was writhing behind her like a giant pink worm, and Judy's foot was beginning to thump.

"She inflicted more damage than was necessary to the rogue Labor," said Lee.

"I figured it'd be easier to pin him down and stick him if I took out his legs first," said Judy. "And last I checked, I don't have to do the Labors any favours."

"You're supposed to handle the situation in a clinical and efficient manner," Lee growled, dropping any pretense of talking to Bogo as she turned to face Judy. "You should be limiting damage on all fronts – including to the enemy Labor."

"That pangolin was ready to kill innocent bystanders," Judy squeaked. "I couldn't play nice with him!"

"So instead you gave him more time to potentially endanger said bystanders," Lee hissed.

"But he wasn't going after those bystanders – he was going after me," Judy snapped. "I figured as long as he was focused on me, he wouldn't endanger civilians!"

Lee's tail was a pink blur. Judy's foot-thumping now had the rhythm of a machine gun.

"So instead you inflicted needles damage to the Hareacles and created more property damage by moving the fight to Sahel Creek Park," Lee barked.

"The mammals at Mystic Springs hadn't all evacuated!" Judy threw up her hands. "What's more important- innocent lives, or real estate values and your precious Hareacles?!"

"Seeing as you've given Unit 1 a pet name, I hardly think you're in a position to-"

"SHUT IT! BOTH OF YOU!" The office shook as Bogo slammed his hooves on his desk. The rabbit and the opossum turned to their Captain.

"I don't know what this bad blood is about, and honestly, I don't care!" growled Bogo, looming over his subordinates. "Now Wilde's already recovered, and Hylander's returning to active duty tomorrow, so hopefully you won't have to rely on each other again."

Judy sighed in relief.

" _That said!_ " Bogo pointedly interrupted Judy's thoughts. "This sort of situation _could_ happen again, so whatever problems you have with each other, you deal with them, and you deal with them _now_. _Are we clear?_ "

"Yes, sir," the two officers droned.

"Dismissed."

Judy left the room first.

"And Lee…" Bogo stopped the opossum as she passed through the door. "I'd appreciate it if you were more flexible out there. You're the Division's second-in-command – I shouldn't have to remind you that respect is a two-way street."

"Yes, sir," Lee murmured as she left the room.

As Lee closed the door behind her, Bogo sighed and studied the ceiling – his new favorite pastime since arriving at SV2.

"I'm guessing this is what you meant by 'the headaches never end,'" piped up Captain Polecatsky.

"Maybe I was being too generous," Bogo huffed.

"I wish I could help you here," said Polecatsky. "But you know more about those two than I do."

 _[OST1]_

Bogo shifted to studying his desk, then got up and opened the filing cabinet near the window. "Maybe this'll help," he said, handing the skunk a file. "This is Lee's file. I've got Hopps'. Try reading it aloud and see what you think."

"Alright," said Polecatsky. "Virginia Lee Foxape. Age 25. Species: _Didelphis virginiana_. Born in Podunk, Deerbrooke County."

"Judith Laverne Hopps. Age 24 – about half a year younger than Lee. Species: _Oryctolagus cuniculus_ ," Bogo read from a similar file. "Born in Bunnyburrow, Burrows County."

"Not much here about Lee's childhood." Polecatsky's brow creased as she looked over Lee's file. "Got a scholarship to Zootopia Technical Institute – a special scholarship for low-income students. Majored in robotics."

"Had a knack for getting into trouble as a child. Captain of her high school varsity girl's softball team for a while." Bogo sighed as he saw the next section of Judy's file. "But she resigned in protest after her school turned down her request to establish a girl's baseball team. Majored in criminal justice at Bunnyburrow Community College."

"After getting her degree, she got a job at a construction firm building a new dam near Podunk. Piloted construction Labors at first. There was a few IWF attacks on the site, so the Deerbrooke County Police and the security company watching the dam site jointly purchased a police-modded Tigersyo and the police recruited Lee so she could pilot it. She managed to take down a few Labor-criminals before being promoted to Sergeant so she could train other pilots guarding the project. Then, she accepted a transfer to your new Division and was promoted to Lieutenant." Polecatsky took a sip of her water after reading the paragraph.

"Submitted twelve applications to the ZPD – the first when she was nine years old." Bogo groaned and shook his head. "All of them were turned down. Shortly after the first Zeeplabor task force was started, she took a course in Labor piloting, and gained experience working with a Bumpacrop – the hell? – on her's family farm. Then, she applied _again_ to the ZPD, and got accepted this time, getting the third-highest score in PLAT history."

"Not so different when you think about it," said Polecatsky. "Come to think of it, it's like Gnuton's Third Law."

"What?" Bogo raised an eyebrow.

"Gnuton's Third Law?" the skunk ventured. "'Every action has an equal and opposite reaction'?"

"Wouldn't go that far," Bogo grunted. "Question is, what do I do about this?"

* * *

A bold red, lagomorph-scaled convertible pulled up to the small SV2 parking lot. A young white hare leapt out of the car, and made her way around the building to the open hangar doors. Once in the hangar, the hare took in the sight of the two Ingrowls.

"Mmmm," she mused as she looked up at Unit 2. "Getting some wear out of you, I see."

"Ms. Inaba?"

The hare's nose twitched as she turned to face Judy Hopps. "Have we met before?"

"You remember me?" said Judy. "B-BATE a few years ago? I was there with my Dad?"

"Oh." Saeko Inaba smiled as her ears perked up. "The Tigersyo video."

"Yeah." Judy puffed out her chest as she gestured to Robin. "If it weren't for that video, I wouldn't be piloting that thing."

Inaba's jaw dropped. "You're a Forward for one of these?"

Judy nodded proudly.

The hare's face pulled up into a grin. "That's incredible!"

"Hang on." The two lagomorphs turned to see Nick Wilde walking up to them, carrying his fishing pole. "You know each other?"

"Well, we only met once," Judy murmured, as Inaba shuffled away slightly from the fox.

"Well, I never met you," said Nick, turning to Inaba. "And I worked for your Dad's company.

Saeko Inaba's father was President and CEO of Inaba Heavy Industries – one of the top Labor manufacturers in the country, and the maker of the AV-45 Ingrowl. Saeko worked for the company as well.

"Oh?" Saeko tilted her head. "Where did you work?"

"Labor R&D – That's why they sent me the recruitment package." Nick shrugged. "How'd you two meet?"

"Oh, it was at B-BATE," said Judy.

"B-BATE?" Now it was Nick's turn to tilt his head.

"The **B** unnyburrow **B** iannual **A** gricultural **T** echnologies **E** xposition?" said Judy. "Anyway, I was there with my Dad and I saw this promo video from IHI showing a police-modded Tigersyo in action. I asked Ms. Inaba about it-"

"Please call me Saeko," the hare giggled.

"I asked _Saeko_ about it, and she told me a few things about the opportunities for small mammals as Zeeplabor pilots. She even gave me a sneak peek at some specs for a new model – one that would eventually become the Ingrowl. Long story short, that's when I decided I'd join the force through SV2."

"Phew!" Nick chuckled. "Maybe _you_ would make a good industrial spy."

Saeko didn't seem to have noticed Nick's remark as she turned to Judy. "Never thought I'd see you here," she chuckled. "Putting the 45 through its paces, I see."

"Mmm-hm!" said Judy, puffing out her chest again. "So what brings you here?"

"Oh, I'm just going over some of your recent deployment records with your Captain – have to see how the new models are performing." The hare began to move away from the pair. "You'll probably get a performance survey once I'm done. Bye!"

Nick shook his head as he looked at the hare bounding up the steps towards the offices. "Saeko Inaba… You're a real high roller, Carrots."

* * *

After leaving Judy, Nick made for one of his usual fishing spots amidst the riprap. All the Animazon Rule-mandated work had been done before his recovery, so he was glad to have dodged that bullet, even if his run-in with chemicals of dubious legality had given him a bizarre crazing for mint chocolate chip ice cream.

Suddenly the fox's ears perked up as he picked up the sound of panting above him. He turned around and glanced up to see Judy and Lee glaring daggers at one another. Clearly, the two had both just been jogging.

"You… didn't… have… to go faster… than me," Lee growled between pants.

"Well… you seemed… pretty keen… to keep up with me," Judy retorted, panting as well.

"That… that sort of competitiveness… is not helping you on the job." The opossum glared at Judy.

"Because I'm a 'loose cannon,' right?" Judy returned the glare. "'Can't be trusted to operate a six-ton Labor'? 'Poses a threat not just to herself, but to officers and civilians around her'?!"

Lee's brow rose before she resumed scowling at Judy. "Eavesdropping on superiors' conversations is unbecoming, _Officer_."

Judy's foot began to thump. "Just what is your problem with me?!"

"Your temperament," Lee said nonchalantly. "I thought I made that clear."

"I get the job done," said Judy. "That's all that matters."

"Uh, ladies…" Nick was getting nervous.

"Yes, but you make a lot of mess doing it." Lee continued staring Judy down. "Sooner or later, you're going to cause damage that won't be so easily forgiven."

"Really?" said Judy, her ears rising, but flopping ever-so-slightly. "Well, how do I know _you_ 're not the impatient one?"

Lee's eyebrow twitched. "What are you saying?"

"I think you want the glory," said Judy, smirking as she placed her hands on her hips. "I think you can't stand the fact that your assigned Labor has had only one takedown – and it was before you got here."

Nick grimaced.

"I see." Lee tilted her head down, her eyes just visible behind a furrowed brow. "Well, since professionalism's obviously gone out the window, I think you're an egomaniac with a hero complex who pilots Labors to feel bigger than everyone else for a change."

Nick's eyes grew to the size of dinner plates.

"So I shouldn't even be here? Is that it?" Judy seethed, her voice white-hot as she clenched her teeth and fists.

"Basically." Lee was unfazed. "In fact, I think it's high time someone taught you a lesson in what piloting a Zeeplabor really means."

"Oh?" Judy raised her head and crossed her arms. "What did you have in mind?"

Lee smirked, her brow still creased.

Nick gulped, hoping he was still stoned.

* * *

 **BACKGROUND MUSIC:**

1) Kenji Kawai - "Impression" - from _Patlabor: The Mobile Police_ TV series.

* * *

Saeko Inaba: Japanese hare ( _Lepus brachyurus_ ) - As mentioned before, Inaba Heavy Industries - and the family they're named after - are named for the old Japanese tale of the Hare of Inaba.


	13. Playing the Possum - Part III

**If this serial is dragging on too much for you by this point, all I can say is, I'm sorry. You see, I wrote "Playing the Possum" with six parts. But when I rewrote it, I had originally planned to merge Parts II and III. I managed to merge them successfully on Archive Of Our Own, but on this site, merging the chapters would screw around with the reviews. I debated writing a quick filler scene as an interlude, but the only place I could safely slot that in would be right between this chapter and the next one, and I have doubts that that would work.** **So for now, my only choice is to leave them rewritten, but separate.**

 **If you have any ideas on how to get around this headache, please PM me or leave a review (ideally on the _previous_ chapter).**

 **Again, I'm sorry about this…**

* * *

 **BACKGROUND MUSIC:**

1) Toshihiko Sahashi - "Respect - Lower East Side" - from _The Big O_

* * *

"A sparring match?" Captain Bogo sputtered. "In Labors?!"

"Yes, sir," said Lee. The possum had come into the Captains' office just as Saeko Inaba was leaving.

Bogo pinched his brow as he sat back in his chair. " _Why_?"

"I think the practice would help hone our skills better," said Lee.

"That's what simulators are for," said Bogo.

"With respect, sir, simulators are still catching up to the Ingrowl, and they can only go so far." Lee's face remained neutral. "You said I should help guide the Division out of this rough period. This is my way of doing that."

"Lee, this-"

"I think it's a _great_ idea!" the door to the office opened, and Saeko Inaba strolled in, ears perked up, a hyperactive, bucktoothed smile etched on her face.

Bogo snorted. Had that hare been listening in? "Why?"

"More action means more movement data for the pilots." Inaba glanced from Lee to Bogo. "It'd be a real growth opportunity for the Ingrowls _and_ their pilots. The company would be thrilled to get that extra data, and I'm sure Bureau Chief Buckminster would, too."

The mention of Buckminster made Bogo's ear twitch. I.H.I. had that stupid elk's ear, and Inaba and Bogo both knew it.

"Alright," Bogo sighed. "But _I_ set the rules. I'll talk with Chief Mechanic Camazotz and we can set a date."

Lee nodded. "Understood, sir."

* * *

Nick buried his head in his hands. "Carrots, I don't know if you've noticed, but _are you insane_?!"

"What?" said Judy as she closed the fridge door. "Bogo okayed it yesterday, didn't he?"

Bogo had indeed set the ground rules for the match, which had been set in four days time, in the big field behind the SV2 building. Bogo and Camazotz had upped the stakes somewhat by promising the winner a two-week exemption from the Animazon Rule, while the loser would be subject to a 'forfeit lottery,' in which the punishment would be drawn at random from a number of ideas submitted by Division 2. Lee and Judy had readily agreed to these conditions.

Now Judy smiled as she imagined Lee doing the forfeit she'd suggested – filling in for Judy's Animazon Rule exemption.

"Yeah, but I keep thinking Lee's got something up her sleeve," said Nick. "Lee's not the kind of mammal to make a bet like this – not unless she knew ahead of time she was going to win."

"Or maybe she's just cocky," said Judy, taking a sip of her orange juice. "And it's not like she's got anything _to_ keep up her sleeve; the Ingrowls are almost identical." The rabbit raised the key drive on her lanyard for emphasis. "If anything she'll be at a disadvantage because I've got my own data – she'll either have to use Hylander's data or a blank key drive."

"Still, I'm not taking any chances," said Nick. "I might-"

Just then, Hylander strode into the Ready Room, with Beaverbrook close behind.

"Never thought I'd see a duel in this day and age," the hyrax chuckled. "Labors instead of pistols, sabers or rapiers!"

Nick raised an eyebrow. "Duel?"

"Naturally." Hylander places his hands on his hips. "This is an affair of honor, isn't it? And I take it you'll be Hopps' second?"

Nick's ears drooped. "Second what?"

Hylander chuckled with patronizing amusement. "You're a philistine, Wilde. In dueling, the seconds act as representatives of the principals – that is to say, of Hopps and Lieutenant Fox-ape."

Nick rolled his eyes. "It's a practice sparring match, Blunderbuss."

"Oh?" said Hylander. "I was under the impression that Hopps offended the Lieutenant, so she threw down the gauntlet and Hopps accepted."

" _She_ offended _me_ ," Judy piped up, prompting Nick to bury his head in his paws.

"Hmm…" Hylander adjusted his glasses. "Part of the role of seconds is to dissuade any unnecessary violence, but you seem committed to this."

"Yes, I am." Judy's tone was firm.

Nick tilted his head at Hylander. "Did Lee put you up to this 'second' thing?"

"I offered to act as the Lieutenant's second, and she raised no objection."

"Of course…" Nick rolled his eyes and began to shuffle Judy out of the Ready Room. "Well, could you just let me do _my_ 'second' thing and talk to my 'principal' for a sec?"

Once they were out, Nick closed the door behind him before turning to Judy.

"I was going to say that I've got a pal who can get us something we need, and I think you do too," he explained. "I'll need you to talk to Joanna."

"I can't ask for special favors from the mechanics," Judy protested.

"It's not a special favor. It's part of their jobs to make it easier to pilot Labors. We're just going ask her to tweak Robin's OS a bit – it's the sort of thing you'd probably ask for anyway after a deployment."

"Okay…" said Judy. "But what's your friend going to provide?"

"I'll have to wait and see if he'll agree," sighed Nick. "Still, couldn't you two have settled this with Checkers or something?"

* * *

That night, after Division 2 went off duty, Nick and Judy found themselves on a street full of warehouses near the SV2 building.

As they waited, Judy was reminded again of how little she really knew about Nick. Who were they supposed to meet tonight? Some black-market Labor parts dealer?

Finally, Judy's ears perked as she recognized the van that had picked Nick up after the Okavango Road deployment.

"Is that it?" she said, trying to mask the fear in her voice.

"Mmm-hm." Nick waved to the van as it pulled up to the curb.

The van's windows were so high that Judy couldn't see the driver.

"You're here early," Nick chimed as he looked up to the passenger-side window.

"I wanna get this over wit' quick," came a baritone voice from inside the van. A chill ran down Judy's spine as the image of an enormous sneering bear or big cat popped into her head."

"Well, did you get it?" said Nick.

"Come 'round the back," the baritone grunted.

Judy and Nick came to the back of the van. The doors swung open, revealing a tiny fennec in a black polo shirt with a red stripe running down the right-hand side, impatience running across his amber eyes. Judy craned her neck to see where the driver was; there was no sign of him from where she was standing.

Meanwhile Nick casually clambered into the van and looked at the massive barrel sitting in the back. The barrel had to be as wide as Judy was tall, not counting her ears, and taller than she was with them.

The red fox nodded approvingly at the cargo. "Mmm! Nice work."

"This had better be worth it, Nick." Judy was flabbergasted to hear the baritone voice from earlier emanating from the fennec's muzzle. "I had a helluva time gettin' this thing in here."

Still a bit stunned by the fennec's voice, Judy clambered into the van to get a better look at the label on the side of the barrel. "What are we going to do with a barrel full of grease?"

"Trust me on this, Carrots," said Nick. "If I'm right, this should even the odds."

* * *

 _[OST]_

Eventually, the day of the 'Duel' – no matter how hard Nick and Bogo tried, Hylander wouldn't quit using that word – had come. It was an overcast, windy day. Some of the spectators began to worry about a rainout, but due to shift scheduling, this was the only day within the next month that the match could conceivably happen.

To no one's surprise, Judy had brought Unit 1 out to the big field. However, Nick couldn't help but notice that Lee had decided to use Unit 3; he and Judy had expected her to bring out Unit 2. Nick didn't know what advantage Division 2's 'relief Labor' would give to the opossum, but Robin's upgrades would hopefully make up for it. Something about Unit 3's bulbous forehead and slim visor made it look sinister as it strode into the field.

Both Units 1 and 3 were equipped with training weapons for the match; they were carrying pellet guns, but they were loaded with paintballs instead of tranquilizer pellets. Additionally, the electromagnetic batons were replaced with inflatable training sticks. Judy's stick and paintballs were colored red while Lee's were pale blue.

Captain Bogo had decided to keep things fair by having there be a panel of judges. Saeko Inaba had offered to be on this committee, but Bogo had already settled on himself, Captain Polecatsky, and Chief Mechanic Camazotz.

Now Bogo stood between the two Ingrowls. An assortment of randomly placed orange barrels surrounded the Labors. An oval of blue barrels marked the boundaries of the field.

"Now these are the rules," Bogo spoke through a megaphone to the two combatants. "Whoever can pin the other Labor down for ten seconds, or render the other Labor inoperable as dictated by us judges, is the winner.

"Each of these barrels…" Bogo placed his manual hoof on one of the orange barrels. "…represents a civilian, a car, or anything else that could potentially cause a lawsuit. If either of you touches or damages one of these barrels, that's a penalty. If the fight leaves the ring marked by the blue barrels, that's a penalty as well. Three penalties in total, and you lose. You strike a blow that could harm the pilot, you lose. Any questions?"

No response from either Judy or Lee.

"Alright…" Bogo ambled off to join his fellow judges behind a folding table a safe distance away. Also watching the battle were Saeko Inaba, both Divisions of SV2, and a handful of mechanics.

"Hey, McTachy," said Lieutenant Marvin Sanderson of Division 1. "Who's your money on?"

"I dunno," said Officer Spike McTachy, an echidna in Division 1. "We've never seen Ingrowls go up against something with a Zeeplabor's reflexes. Either way, this'll be interesting."

"We've never seen that opossum in action." muttered Division 1 Officer Wanda Hickory. "But my money's on the bunny – she's too crazy for anyone to predict."

"Don't count on it," said Sanderson, his tail twitching. "Lee's more experienced. She's got this."

Nick took a deep breath behind the gossiping Division 1 officers.

Saeko Inaba's grin was on the verge of splitting her face open, she was so excited.

Behind the judges' table, Bogo raised his megaphone. "Three! Two! One! _Go_!"


	14. Playing the Possum - Part IV

**BACKGROUND MUSIC:**

1) Kenji Kawai - "T-City" - from _Patlabor: The Mobile Police_ TV series

2) Kenji Kawai - "Theme of Ultraman Zero" - from _Ultraman Zero: The Revenge of Belial_

* * *

" _GO!_ " Bogo repeated. Had Lee and Judy not heard him?

Unit 3 had jolted briefly, but had now returned to a neutral pose. Unit 1 had stood still the entire time. Bogo wished he could see what was going on with the two pilots, but he could only see the Ingrowls' impassive, mouthplated, visored faces.

Inside Unit 3, Lee clenched her teeth. Why wasn't Hopps taking the initiative?!

In Unit 1, Judy sighed in relief. She and Nick had both figured Lee would wait for Judy to slip ip. Therefore, they figured the best plan was to make the opossum come to Judy rather than the other way around.

Among the bystanders, Nick kept his eye on Unit 3, smirking a little at how Lee had obviously been caught flat-pawed, but he didn't know how the marsupial would react to Judy's inaction.

Bogo was beginning to wonder if this match was going to be an even bigger waste of time and energy than he thought when suddenly, Saeko Inaba jumped up and grabbed his megaphone out of his hooves.

"Come on, let's see some action!" the hare yelled.

Bogo glared at Inaba and snatched the megaphone back.

Judy had evidently thrown the plan to the wind, for she bent Robin down and charged toward Unit 3.

Lee was quick to react. She had already raised Unit 3's cockpit to the upper position, and flicked a switch on her Labor's control panel. Parts of her Ingrowl's head began to open up as short antennae extended from the forehead and 'cheek guards.'

In Robin's cockpit, Judy's monitors suddenly changed to static. Disoriented, she wound up making Unit 1 slam into Unit 3. Her tackle had connected, but not true. Her left shoulder slid off Unit 3's abdomen, and Robin tumbled to the ground, flattening a barrel under its chest like an empty beer can. Unit 3 stumbled a little from the impact, but adjusted its footing and avoided falling over.

"Hopps – penalty," Bogo's voice came over the two Labors' comms systems.

"Hold it right there!" Nick clambered onto the folding table. "I call shenanigans. The ECM pod is cheating!" At least now he knew why Lee had opted for Unit 3.

Inside her machine, Lee grimaced. How had Hopps closed the distance so fast?! "We should be prepared for anything in the field, sir," she explained through Unit 3's loudspeakers.

Bogo turned to Captain Polecatsky on his right. "Thoughts?"

The spotted skunk leaned on the table and tented her fingers. "I've not known Labor-criminals to use that kind of sophisticated equipment; then again, I've not known them to use firearms either."

Bogo then turned to Chief Mechanic Camazotz on his left. The spectral bat just shrugged.

"The penalty stands," the buffalo finally said into his walkie-talkie. "But no more use of the ECM – got that?"

"Yes, sir," said Lee.

 _[OST1]_

Judy had finished getting up. Lee took a step back. Robin sprang at Unit 3 again, but this time Lee took out Unit 3's pellet gun. But to the opossum's amazement, she wasn't quick enough on the draw, and Unit 1 delivered a clothesline to Unit 3, sending it sprawling to the ground.

Lee had to dodge two barrels as she fell, and a third as she got up. She pointed the pellet gun at Unit 1, but once again Judy closed the distance in the blink of an eye, using the shield on Robin's left arm to swat the gun out of Unit 3's hand.

Lee wasn't sure what was going on. Unit 1's movements were fluid and controlled, as if it were an actual mammal.

In Robin's cockpit, Judy's focus was laser-like. She swung again and again at Unit 3, forcing it to back up further and further.

"Wow," murmured Clawhauser.

"She's good," Lieutenant Sanderson admitted. "She's not giving Lee any room to breathe."

"I don't think I've seen a Labor move that fast before," muttered Captain Polecatsky.

"Come on, Lieutenant!" pleaded Hylander before turning to Beaverbrook. "Come on, Beaverbrook, show some support!"

"Uh…" Beaverbrook, caught off-guard, adjusted his glasses. "Uh, 'One! Two! One-two-three! We! Are! All for Lee!" The beaver did a half-hearted fist-pump, then hung his head. "Ah, woodchips. That was _terrible_!"

Nick smirked. Judy had this in the bag.

All Lee could do was continue to either dodge blows or deflect them with Unit 3's shield, waiting for an opening to turn things around. However, before one could come, Bogo's voice came over her comms system.

"Lee, you're out of bounds. That's a penalty."

"What?" Lee examined her surroundings. Two blue barrels were to either side of Unit 3. Lee had been so focused on holding Judy's onslaught back that she'd backed her Ingrowl out of the boundaries the two barrels marked.

Judy raised her cockpit and made Robin take a few steps back so Lee could re-enter the boundaries. The rabbit had obviously been taking smirking lessons from Wilde. "And _I'm_ the careless one?"

Lee's brow furrowed. Her grip on Unit 3's controls tightened. Her breathing and heartbeat quickened.

 _No._ That little upstart would _not_ win. Lee had said she'd show her what it meant to pilot a giant robot and she _meant it_.

For a second, Judy was actually worried Lee was injured. But then Lee's voice came through Unit 3's loudspeakers.

"Hopps…" Lee panted. "You… have no idea… what you're up against."

Suddenly, Unit 3 bent its arms and tilted its head up, as if it were screaming at the sky.

 _[OST2]_

 _"HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!_ "

The spectacle shook Judy enough that she made Robin take a few steps back.

" **INGROWL KNUCKLE!** " Lee shrilled.

Judy had time to utter a quick "what" before Unit 3 delivered a punch to Unit 1's head.

Nick's jaw dropped, as did nearly everyone else's.

"Ingrowls don't respond to voice commands," said Wanda Hickory, tilting her head. "…do they?"

" **CALAMITY BLADE!** " Lee yelled, pulling out Unit 3's inflatable stun-stick substitute from under her machine's shield.

"What is she _doing_?!" sputtered Captain Polecatsky.

"Embarrassing me to no end," deadpanned Captain Bogo, silently kissing the idea of a mentally balanced Division goodbye.

Judy backed up carefully and unsheathed her own inflatable baton. What was going on here?!

" _CHESSS-TOH!_ " Lee yelled, swinging her baton at Robin's midsection. Judy parried with her rod, and began to back off. Gone were the surgical, calculated movements Lee had shown earlier. Now they were replaced with something raw and unrelenting.

"Well that flipped in a hurry," muttered Spike McTachy.

"For the love of Nocturna, those aren't swords!" moaned Chief Mechanic Camazotz as Judy continued to parry Lee's attacks.

" _ONE! TWO! ONE-TWO-THREE! WE! ARE! ALL FOR LEE!_ " barked Hylander. Beaverbook took a step back from the hyrax, stunned by his own ramshackle chant.

Judy swung her machine to the left, hoping to get around and 'insert' the baton into Unit 3's batteries. However Lee caught on, and used her shield to deflect the rod away.

But this led Judy to find another opening. She took advantage of Lee's distraction and delivered a kick to Unit 3's leg, upsetting its balance. Judy then dealt a blow to Unit 3's back with her free arm, sending her opponent tumbling forward. Robin then charged forward to administer a decisive blow to the batteries.

However, Lee spun Unit 3 around as she fell, dropping her baton and landing on its hands. With another primal scream, Lee made Unit 3 swing around and kick Robin's baton out of its grasp.

Judy backed up, drew Robin's pellet gun and fired two shots. However, Lee saw what Robin was doing and dodged. One paintball missed, but the other splattered over the lightbar on top of Unit 3's left shoulder.

"That'd take out some armour," observed Camazotz. "But the inner mechanics would be grazed at worst. Still, another hit there and that arm'd be useless."

While Unit 3 still wasn't as fast as the somehow-faster Unit 1, it still got close enough to Robin that Judy had no choice but to discard her pellet gun and resort to another round of hand-to-hand combat. This time, the rabbit was ready for the opossum. She kept her hands up and used her shield to deflect a blow from Unit 3 before grabbing it by the midsection. Judy would have forced the other machine down, but Lee planted Unit 3's feet into the ground and pushed into Judy, knocking both Ingrowls down like dominoes.

"We should've charged admission," chuckled a pig mechanic.

Judy was down, but not out. She tried to grapple with Unit 3, hoping to roll both Zeeplabors over so she could pin it down, but she noticed there were orange barrels to either side of her and relented. Lee took advantage of Judy's confusion and managed to stand back up. Robin did the same and stepped away from the two barrels.

" **INAZUMA ROUNDHOUSE KICK!** " Lee yelled, swinging Unit 3's leg around.

But to the opossum's surprise, the grey bunny was once again faster to react. Robin took a step back, and in one swift movement, caught Unit 3's leg as it closed in.

Judy then redirected the leg's momentum, swinging Robin's left arm around to catch the back of Unit 3's neck and forcing it to the ground. Judy clenched her teeth as she tried to hold the machine down.

Now it was Lee's turn to mount an attempted comeback. She'd noticed an object in the grass in front of her; the pellet gun that Unit 3 had dropped earlier in the fight. Thinking quickly, Lee lurched her Ingrowl forward, grabbing the gun in Unit 3's hands and swinging the weapon toward Robin. Robin abandoned the attempted pin to grab at the gun, and both Labors writhed in the grass to gain control of the weapon.

Three shots were let wild in the scuffle before Bogo's irate voice broke over the combatants' comms systems.

"THIS MATCH IS OVER! YOU'RE BOTH PENALIZED! _KNOCK IT OFF!_ "

"What?!"

Judy and Lee looked over to where the spectators were and realized what had happened.

All three of the pale blue paintballs fired in the struggle over the pellet gun had splattered over the area. Lieutenant Sanderson and several of the mechanics had been knocked to the ground by one. Clawhauser had taken the brunt of the second one, and now looked like a giant pink blueberry as he blinked in confusion. Hylander had escaped the deluge by taking cover behind the cheetah's girth. Nick and Beaverbrook hadn't been so lucky; enough of the second shot had gone their way to knock the fox onto his back and the beaver onto his belly. Bogo had realized what was going on in time to see the third shot coming, and had tipped over the folding table for cover, protecting Polecatsky and Camazotz. However, being the largest of the judges, the buffalo hadn't ducked down behind the table fast enough, and now the right side of his face was pale blue.

"I repeat," Bogo growled into his walkie-talkie as the two Ingrowls got to their feet. "That's penalty number three – this match is over!"

"Three, sir?" said Lee in an almost unnervingly calm voice after her earlier outbursts. "Counting this, Hopps and I only have two each."

"I said three penalties _in total_ would lead to an automatic loss." Bogo glared at Unit 3. "Once when Hopps hit that barrel, once when you went out of bounds, and once when you both opened fire on bystanders."

"Wait, the penalties were counting against _both_ of us?!" sputtered Judy.

"In the field, public safety doesn't give a damn about who breaks what," said Bogo. "It's not enough for you to avoid damage – your jobs require you to make sure the other Labor doesn't wreck anything either."

Nick cleaned some of the paint from his face with some uprooted weeds before glaring up at Bogo. "Why didn't you tell us?!"

Bogo returned the glare. "In our line of work, I shouldn't have to."

* * *

After everyone returned to the hangar to examine the Ingrowls or wash off the paint – which thankfully was biodegradable – Lee mulled over the events of the sparing match as she looked up at Unit 1.

Judy's movements had been elastic and graceful, as if Lee were fighting an eel – and how had that rabbit been able to move the Ingrowl so fast?! Any faster and Judy might as well paint Unit 1 red and start donning a mask for no good reason.

Just then, Captain Bogo passed by, having already wiped the paint from his face.

"Captain?" said the possum. "Just so I know, which of us lost the match?"

"Both of you." Judging by the buffalo's offhand tone, something was on his mind.

"I-I see…" muttered Lee. "And the forfeit lottery?"

"That'll have to wait, Lieutenant," Bogo sighed. "We've just got a notice from City Hall."

"City Hall?"

"Storm outside's only getting worse." Bogo glanced at the papers in his hooves. "The Climate Control Office thinks the heavy winds are going to slip through to Little Rodentia.

Lee's brows shot up. Zootopia's highly sophisticated climate control systems were immensely powerful. The need to maintain and more recently replace them was one of the main reasons for the proliferation of Labors and rodent-scaled Microlabors. That said, even these systems couldn't completely control the weather, and some phenomena occasionally 'slipped through' the system.

The rodent-scaled Borough of Little Rodentia in particular was highly susceptible to strong weather 'slipping through.' The city had acknowledged this weakness by keeping a prefabricated geodesic dome in storage that could be assembled over the Borough for this sort of emergency.

"Has something happened, sir?" said Lee.

"No, not yet," said Bogo. "But they're putting up the big dome to be on the safe side. Bureau Chief Buckminster and Borough Chief Brie want us there in case something goes wrong."

"I see," Lee sighed. "I'll get the others ready."


	15. Playing the Possum - Part V

**BACKGROUND MUSIC:**

1) Kenji Kawai - "Meisou Yakuin Kai" ("The High-Ups Plan a Retaliation") - from _Earth Defence Dai-Guard_

2) Kenji Kawai - "Zenchou" ("Omen") - from _Earth Defence Dai-Guard_

3) Kenji Kawai - "Shouri" ("Victory") - from _Earth Defence Dai-Guard_

* * *

The storm only grew worse as Division 2 made its way downtown.

Little Rodentia's central location – within walking distance of Aquavitae Plaza – brought back none-too-pleasant memories of Okavango Road for the Officers. With this in mind, Captain Bogo was already in a bad mood, and that was before he had to meet with his boss, Bureau Chief Eli Buckminster.

The buffalo took a deep breathe in before squeezing his massive frame through the door to the ZPD mobile command center that had been set up just outside Little Rodentia. He'd need all the mental fortification he could get.

Officers of both the typical large standard ZPD variety and the small Little Rodentia ZPD variety were milling around the trailer. Bureau Chief Buckminster himself was talking over something with a bunch of rodents who were standing on a table. The shiny buttons and medals of the elk's dress uniform (which he always wore) glinted in the dim fluorescent light. On the table, Bogo recognized Angela Brie, Borough Chief for Little Rodentia. Unlike Buckminster, the mouse was donning a simple rain poncho.

"All I'm saying is, is that Special Vehicles is _completely_ at your disposal, so you don't have anything to worry about," said Buckminster, causing Bogo to wince at his usual sycophancy.

Outranking Bogo, Brie had no issue with rolling _her_ eyes. "Well, remember, you're just here in case of an emergency."

It figured that Buckminster was shoveling a sales pitch down Brie's throat. Nominally Borough Chiefs and Bureau Chiefs were of equal rank, but some wielded more power and influence than others depending on what scope their jurisdictions had. Angela Brie in particular was one of the more powerful, as the Little Rodentia ZPD was practically its own police force. In contrast, the Bureau Chief of Special Vehicles was hardly worth noticing – not to hear Buckminster say it, given how often he bragged about hobnobbing with the ZPD's top ranks.

"Ah, Bogo!" The elk finally noticed Bogo enter. "Glad to see you could make it."

"You ordered me here, sir," said Bogo, struggling to keep the contempt out of his voice.

"Yes, right." Buckminster quickly turned back to Brie. "Anyway, we're… uh…"

"So far we've put up the frame and the lower cladding of the dome," Brie explained, turning to Bogo. "The city's got two Scorpios bringing up panels from outside and Clenchers securing them on the inside. SV3's standing by on the interior. There's supposed to be a third Scorpio, but they got stuck in traffic on the way here. Still, if all goes well, we'll be done in just under an hour."

Bogo nodded. Special Vehicles Third Section was the ZPD's Microlabor Division, with jurisdiction over Little Rodentia.

"And the storm?" Bogo asked.

"MOAA says it'll get _really_ nasty in about ninety minutes," piped a uniformed mouse officer next to Brie.

"Is your team decked up?" said Buckminster.

"It's being taken care of now," said Bogo.

"Well, what are you standing around here for?" Buckminster huffed, as if he weren't the one that had asked Bogo to check in with him earlier. "Get to it."

"Yes, sir," Bogo quietly made his way out of the trailer.

* * *

A tiny shrew wobbled her way through the surrounding Little Rodentia and the incomplete dome, screaming into her phone over the wind.

"No, Daddy. They've closed off the square. I'll take my chances and stay in Little Rodentia 'til it blows over. They're puttin' the dome up now. I'll call you once I'm in."

Francesca 'Fru-Fru' Shrewleone ambled her way against the wind; thankful she was on the leeward side of the dome.

* * *

By now, Units 1 and 2 were both decked-up, their pilots on standby. From inside Robin's cockpit, Judy watched a city-owned Scorpio lift a prefabricated dome panel into position.

Like the Crabmammal, the Scorpio was a four-legged, insect-like machine with wheels inside its legs. The key difference though was the giant crane-arm erected at the rear end like a scorpion's tail – hence the name. On the other side of the dome, another Scorpio was lifting panels up.

For each panel secured to the dome from the outside, Microlabors from Little Rodentia were working to secure them in place from the inside.

Meanwhile, Judy thought back to Lee's abrupt change in personality. How had that opossum gone from Lieutenant Proper-and-Professional to Screaming Banshee in seconds?

A memory popped into her head of some of the stuff she'd seen her younger siblings watch, and some of the stuff Captain Bogo had said while dressing down Division 2 after Okavango Road.

No. Her? Lee?!

Bogo's voice on the radio interrupted Judy's thoughts. _"We have a problem."_

 _"Sir?"_ came Hylander's voice.

 _"One of the city Scorpios has broken down, and the storm's only getting closer. We'll need you two to help put up dome panels. But before you go, remember one thing; mammals your size can't enter Little Rodentia without special permission. Labors in Little Rodentia are a_ big _no-no. I don't want to see a single Ingrowl toe over that fence."_

* * *

 _[OST1]_

After being released from their respective trailers, Units 1 and 2 made their way to the other side of the incomplete dome.

The work was essentially the same thing the Scorpios were doing; picking up plastic panels for the dome and holding them in place, allowing the comparatively tiny, caterpillar-shaped Clencher Microlabors to secure them to the geodesic dome from the inside.

Judy found it interesting how the Clenchers looked and worked. Microlabors often had more adventurous shapes and designs as they didn't have to worry about the square/cube law like regular Labors, and were often built for more specific tasks – like the Clencher, which was built to climb up tall surfaces. Judy had also heard of a serpentine Microlabor that inspected and repaired pipes and a firefighting Microlabor that could climb tall (by rodent standards) buildings and deploy a ladder or slide to the ground.

Half the work had been done already when the Scorpio had broken down, but Judy was still worried about the impending storm. The winds were only getting stronger, and Judy could even feel Robin sway a little around her.

Looking to her left, she noticed Hylander was getting nervous too as he carried a panel toward the dome.

 _"Aw, fuzz!"_ squeaked a Little Rodentian foremammal on the inside through the comms system. _"Quick! One of you cops get over to Panel B-9 – bolts're comin' loose there!"_

Judy made Robin dash for the afflicted panel as it rattled in the wind. She spurred Unit 1 to run faster, but it was too late. The triangular panel tore off the frame, sailing in the wind before slamming into Unit 2's face. Judy managed to catch the panel just after the impact.

"You alright?" Judy asked Hylander, remembering the Hrax's experience at Mystic Springs Oasis.

"Bah! I'm fine!" said Hylander.

The construction work continued, becoming more and more difficult as the panels were placed higher and the winds became stronger.

Judy and Hylander had to keep Bogo's warning in mind as they had to lean a little over the dome in order to reach the upper parts of it.

Eventually, there was only one panel left; the one that fit over the very top. Unfortunately, this area was beyond the Ingrowl's reach. The Scorpio's crane could reach it, but the winds kept blowing it askew from where it was supposed to fit.

"Normally the second and third Scorpios would help keep it in place," Borough Chief Brie explained to Bogo in the trailer.

"Can't we get that third Scorpio there?" Bureau Chief Buckminster growled at Bogo, who braced for the inevitable blame game.

"No good," said the mouse officer assisting Brie. "The storm created a huge pileup on the A9 and its carrier got caught in the gridlock after it. They're still trying to pick up the pieces after that shitstorm."

Now the winds were at gale force. Judy kept thinking of how to get the panel safely position, then noticed that the broken-down Scorpio was sitting near the police trailer, and the image of Nick fishing popped into her mind.

"Uh, Captain Bogo?" the bunny said into her receiver. "Is the broken Scorpio's crane still working?"

"What?" Inside the trailer, Bogo raised an eyebrow.

"Maybe…"

Bogo turned to see the muskrat from the Municipal Engineering Department who was in charge of the Scorpios. "Motor systems were shot, but the crane still works, yeah."

"What good does that do?" said Bogo, not sure whether to address Judy or the muskrat.

In Unit 1, Judy grinned. "I've got an idea…"

* * *

Admittedly, having Robin use the broken-down Scorpio as a giant fishing pole had seemed a lot better in Judy's head. The wind wasn't helping either; as the two cranes hoisted up the final panel, Judy had a few moments where she kept thinking the panel would blow right off the cable. The meerkat operating the broken-down Scorpio's crane was very cooperative, and Hylander in Unit 2 was also helping to keep the Scorpio steady.

"That's it… That's it…" muttered the meerkat. "Keep 'er steady."

As both Ingrowls and the working Scorpio guided the panel into place, Judy thought they had it in the bag.

But then, another sudden gust blew the panel sideways, swinging it precariously to the point where Judy worried it'd blow off the hooks altogether.

No long after, someone came into the mobile command center.

"Sirs?" said Lee. "I think I might be of some help."

* * *

 _[OST2]_

Judy was already having doubts about her own 'fishing pole' idea. Seeing Lee climb up atop the working Scorpio's crane to hold the plastic panel down onto the frame pushed that doubt into outright regret.

"I'll be alright, sir," Lee had assured Captain Bogo. "I'm a climbing species, and I'll have a harness.

Sure enough, Lee had acquired a mountain climbing harness from a sporting goods store a block away.

Now she sat atop the crane arm, lashed to its tip.

"The Lieutenant has guts," said Hylander.

Even Judy had to agree.

On top of the crane, Lee held onto the cold metal surface as best she could. The fact that her feet were built for grasping helped her stay in place, and her hardhat offered further protection. Hopefully though, she wouldn't need it.

"Okay, that's it," she said into her earpiece. "Keep lowering…"

Just then, another gust whipped up. Lee's grip intensified and she waited for it to die down before gently sliding down the cable onto the panel.

Lee resisted the temptation to look at the square around her. Climbing species or not, this was not the time to risk vertigo or acrophobia – she had no idea how susceptible she was to either.

Still, her plan seemed to be working. Lee's weight on the panel made it somewhat steadier as it was lowered down further. By adjusting her weight, she was able to balance out the wind's effects on the panel.

Just then, a powerful gust shot Lee's way, and she was swept off the swinging panel. Thankfully, her harness caught her. The opossum dangled for a while, the rope grinding against the edge of the panel. She breathed heavily as she saw down the side of the dome.

 _"Lee!"_ Bogo yelled into her earpiece.

"I-I'm fine, sir," panted Lee as she began to pull herself up. "I'll give it another try."

Lee successfully hoisted herself back onto the crane arm, her heart still racing.

Suddenly, another sharp gust sent Lee flying off the cable. The rope stopped her again, but she immediately heard a gut-wrenching 'snap!' and her blood turned to ice as she felt the pull of gravity again.

It turned out that during her earlier fall, the sharp edge of the panel had cut into the rope, weakening it.

On the ground, Judy's heart stopped as she saw the rope break. But to her amazement, Lee quickly wrapped her prehensile tail around the cable.

Now more sure of her grip, Lee placed her hands on the top panel, digging her claws into the plastic, clenching her teeth as she swung it as hard as she could into the right alignment.

"Lower it," she hissed into her earpiece.

Bogo's voice was sharp with concern. _"Lee, you need-"_

"I said _lower it_!"

Sure enough, the crane began paying out cable, and Lee felt herself descending a little as the panel slid into place with a satisfying 'clunk.'

Lee sighed as she heard the Clenchers begin securing the panel underneath her.

But in her relief, her tail's grip on the cable lessened, and she was caught flat-pawed by the next gust, and she fell onto the rain-slick panel.

The possum dug her claws into the plastic to no avail, and the wind, coupled with her momentum, sent her tumbling off the side of the dome. A rodent-sized scream became louder and louder as Lee closed her eyes and braced for the inevitable.

Lee sensed nothing at first, but then Judy's voice came though what sounded like a loudspeaker.

 _[OST3]_

"Love your hair."

"Aww," a tiny voice squeaked. "Thank you!"

Lee opened her eyes. Softly gripping her were the massive fingers of an Ingrowl. Peering down between the fingers, Lee could see the figure of a tiny shrew glancing up at something behind her.

Turning around, Lee could see that the shrew was looking at the impassive face of Unit 1 looking down on them both.

 _"Are you alright, Lee?!"_ Bogo snapped through the opossum's earpiece.

"I-I'm fine, sir." Lee couldn't quite believe what had happened either.

As soon as Lee began tumbling down the dome, Judy had rocketed away from the broken-down Scorpio, and grasped Lee as she fell, stopping her from crushing the shrew underneath. The Ingrowl had placed its free hand on the ground to stop the fall just inches above the shrew's head.

Snapping out of her amazement, Lee turned to the rodent she'd nearly flattened. "What are you doing here? It's not safe!"

"I-I was tryin'a get in the dome. I thought 'cause the wind was blowin' in the other direction…" The shrew trailed off.

Lee sighed. "Sir, we have a rodent civilian on the premises. She says she was trying to get into the dome. What do we do with her?"

 _"Can you walk?"_ Bogo asked.

"I think so." Lee flexed her toes to be sure.

 _"Have Hopps escort her to the nearest entrance to the Borough. The Little Rodentia force can take care of her from there. You come_ right _back to the trailer and get yourself checked out. Caught or not, that fall could have killed you!"_

But it hadn't.

Why?!

* * *

 **CHARACTER NAMES:**

Eli Buckminster: Tule elk ( _Cervus canadensis nannodes_ )

Angela Brie: I can't really take credit for Brie - she was in early drafts of _Zootopia_ as an Officer, but was removed because the creators wanted Judy to be the smallest mammal on the force.


	16. Playing the Possum - Part VI

**BACKGROUND MUSIC:**

1) Toshihiko Sahashi - "Procrastination" - from _The Big O_

2) Micheal Giacchino - "Foxy Fakeout" - from _Zootopia_

PV) Kenji Kawai - "Scramble" - from _Patlabor - The Mobile Police_ TV series

* * *

Lee was still pondering Judy's impossible rescue as Division 2 headed back.

No matter how Lee looked at it, there was no conceivable way that Hopps could have caught her like that… and yet Lee had survived to tell the tale.

As many times as cartoons depicted giant robots saving lives by catching falling mammals, the idea of a Labor performing that feat in real life was just unthinkable. Suddenly stopping Lee's fall should have dealt her grievous, perhaps even fatal injuries. But Lee had only suffered some bruising, and that may have been from tumbling down the side of the dome _before_ actually falling.

So why?!

A few hours after returning to the hangar, Lee remembered that her command car had been parked facing the scene of the fall. She quickly extracted the footage from its dash-cam, uploaded it onto Ready Room 2's computer, and sure enough, there it was.

In one graceful, swooping movement, Judy had enveloped Unit 1's fingers around Lee as her fall began, and gradually slowed down the fall as she came down.

Lee had to watch the footage several times – mostly in slow motion – before finally processing what had happened.

Lee stepped out of the Ready Room and wandered back into the hangar, stopping at the sound of an argument between Joanna Namakoro and Chief Mechanic Camazotz in front of Unit 1.

"What's this I hear about you muckin' around with Unit 1's OS before the match without telling me?!" the bat snapped, crawling toward her subordinate.

"I wasn't mucking!" Joanna backed away from the much smaller bat, holding up her paws defensively. "Hopps wanted me to loosen the movement parameters! That's allowed!"

"You what?" Camazotz was more puzzled than outraged. Lee shared her confusion.

Movement parameters defined how sensitive a Labor's OS was to the pilot's commands. Joanna was correct in saying that 'tuning' the movement parameters was allowed – in fact, most of the time, pilots requested it to make sure that the Labor responded better to them. Zeeplabor pilots in particular needed a responsive machine so that they could react properly to rapidly changing situations. 'Tightening' them made the Labor less sensitive, 'loosening' them made it more so.

But as Labors became more advanced, it was now much more common for Forwards to ask the mechanics to tighten the parameters – so that the Labor didn't flail around dangerously at the slightest nudge of a control lever.

"Well, next time let me know first," growled Camazotz, who then flew up to Unit 1's open cockpit. "But what's all this grease I keep smelling up here?! What conceivable reason would you have to slather grease all over the lever and pedal joints?!"

Joanna shrugged. "I didn't put that there. I think Hopps and Wilde did that."

The grease added another layer of confusion. Coupled with the loose movement parameters, the greased-up controls should have made Unit 1 nearly uncontrollable, not insanely agile like it had been in the sparring match and the deployment at Little Rodentia.

"Not possible…" Lee muttered under her breath.

 _"All members of Division 2 report to the Captains' office,_ " Bogo's voice rang out over the PA system.

Lee made her way to the office, unsure what the meeting was about. She'd already started her report of the deployment, and she knew that at least a few of the others had done the same.

On the way there, Lee overheard Hylander complaining to Beaverbrook about the now-memetic EweTube video showing the panel blowing off the dome and straight into Unit 2's face.

"By all rights, I should sue them for defamation of character!" he muttered.

"It's the internet. It'll blow over," said Beaverbrook.

Once in the office, all the members of Division 2, lined up to attention.

"Now, before this mess began," Bogo explained, pacing up and down the row of officers. "We were going to hold a 'forfeit lottery' to decide how to punish you lot for what happened in Hopps and Lee's sparring match." Bogo stopped to look down the line. "While I realize that the last deployment was… stressful, I don't think it would hurt if you all received a gentle reminder that there are consequences for misusing Labors."

Judy studied the floor. Lee summoned as much poise as she could, staring at the opposite wall.

"So I have decided," Bogo continued, "To forgo the lottery and give you the most 'relaxing' punishment submitted."

Everyone's glanced from one to the other of his or her fellow officers.

"Congratulations, Officer Wilde." The slightest hint of a grin appeared on Bogo's face. "It was your idea I selected."

Division 2's attention soon turned to Nick. The fox merely grinned and shuffled nervously.

"Nick…?!" Judy raised an accusatory eyebrow at her partner.

Nick chuckled nervously. "Well… We can get out of uniform at least."

* * *

 _[OST1]_

"If anyone behind me is staring at my butt," Judy yelled. "I'd like to remind them that my legs, which can _kick really hard_ , are attached to it!"

The grey doe had successfully covered her bare front with her ears and hands, but she was now realizing she'd left her rear flank unguarded.

Lee was glad she had her prehensile tail to wrap around her rear, freeing her arms to cover her chest as the two women exited the ladies' changing rooms at Mystic Springs Oasis.

Mercifully, a giant tarpaulin had been hung over the hole in the wall created during the Hareacles' rampage, so the only mammals that could peer at them were Naturalists, who seemed eerily uninterested in looking at their private parts. Still, the experience was discomforting for the pair.

"I'm gonna garrote that fox with his own tail," Lee heard Judy mutter.

Just then, out came Joanna Namakoro, hands nervously pressed against her crotch.

"I wish I had bigger hands…" she murmured.

"What?" said Judy. "Is something wrong?"

"It's just that the, uh… _hardware_ for female hyenas is a little bit different than for other species." Joanna's ears lowered submissively. "My Mom always said it was no big deal, but I… I never really hung around that many other hyenas, so I always found it kinda embarrassing."

"Oh…" Judy glanced around, then noticed something out of the corner of her eye. "I don't think it'll be a problem here." She gestured to where a binturong woman was drying herself off, indifferent to her full frontal nudity.

"Oh…" Joanna nervously took her hands off her groin. "That's gotta be the first time I've seen one of those that wasn't on a hyena."

"What are you doing here anyway?" said Lee.

"Chief wanted to pay me back for adjusting _your_ OS without telling her." The hyena glared at Judy.

"Sorry, Joanna…" Judy groaned. "I'll make it up to you."

"Let's just get this over with…" Lee sighed, and the three women slowly made their way into the courtyard.

Were it not for the tarpaulins covering holes in the wall and one of the buildings, you'd think nothing had changed since the Hareacles' rampage. Blissfully naked mammals went about their business, swimming in the Pleasure Pool, playing volleyball, or engaging in other activities.

"Oh, hi!" An ermine walked up to the trio. "You must be new here!"

"Uh, yeah…" Judy wasn't sure whether to be comforted or unnerved by the fact that the mustelid wasn't looking at their… sensitive areas.

"Cool!" The ermine made his way to the gentlemammals' changeroom. "Hope you have a good time!"

No one else seemed to be looking at the three in a perverted way. Nonetheless, Lee's eyes kept flickering between all the naturalists.

"Hey, look!" Joanna gestured to one of the volleyball courts. There was Nick, Hylander, Clawhauser, and Beaverbrook, all enjoying themselves, seeming completely ignorant of their nakedness. From the look of it, Clawhauser and Beaverbrook's team was winning handily.

Judy and Lee instinctively averted their eyes.

"Should we-"

"No," Judy and Lee chorused, interrupting Joanna.

"They'd never let us hear the end of it," said Judy.

Just then, Lee noticed a small, vacant, kidney-shaped swimming pool tucked behind a small hedge. Ideally suited to avoid attention.

"Quiet pool at two o'clock," she whispered to her compatriots, before seeing a grey blur suddenly shoot by her, and in a flash, all of Judy Hopps from the shoulders down was submerged in the pool.

Lee had heard bunnies were fast – thanks in part to their metabolism – but Judy then had seemed as fast as… as…

In another flash, the pieces fit together for Lee.

Back in the sparring match, Lee had assumed that it was Unit 1's modifications that had made it so fast. But she had ruled it out when she remembered that the Ingrowl's base speed was in fact quite fast – it was the tight default movement parameters in its OS that restrained it.

The lowered parameters and greased-up controls for Unit 1 now made sense. Most of the time, tuning the movement parameters was done so that the pilot could keep up with the Labor. But for Judy Hopps and her insane bunny metabolism and reflexes, it was necessary to make Unit 1's parameters looser than the default settings so that _it_ could keep up with _her_.

Lee gaped before shaking it off and slipping into the pool. Did Judy actually have some kind of innate talent? No. Animals weren't just _born_ good Labor pilots.

"Gyah…" muttered Judy, pulling the lower part of her drooped ears out of the water. "It's always kinda weird having your ears dip in like that."

With Judy's ears lifted up, Lee got a better look at her naked form. The possum's brow raised as she realized that underneath her uniform, even with fur covering her, the bunny was slightly, but noticeably, on the muscular side.

"Hopps…" said Lee, "Do you… work out?"

"Yeah…?" Judy's nose wiggled.

Lee averted her eyes as the insides of her ears began to redden.

Before the rabbit could inquire why Lee had asked, there were quite a few splashes as Joanna tried to make her way into the pool. The closest the hyena could come to submerging her whole torso was if she almost lay down. This pool was obviously made for smaller mammals like Judy and Lee.

"Sorry, gals," said Joanna. "Pool's too shallow. I'll try the mud pits. Wish me luck!"

The hyena ambled off, leaving Judy and Lee sitting in the small pool. For a while, they sat there, eyes occasionally flitting toward one another.

 _[OST2]_

"Lee…" Judy began at last. "Can I ask you something?"

"What?" Lee raised an eyebrow.

"Do you…" Judy clenched her teeth in discomfort. "…watch giant robot cartoons?"

"Why do you ask?" Lee tried to disguise her displeasure.

"It's just that back in the sparring match, you were kinda…" Judy measured her words. "… calling your attack names like on those super robot shows."

Terror seeped across Lee's face. "That was out loud?!"

Judy stared at Lee. How did she not know that?! "It was on your loudspeakers."

Lee stared at Judy, then submerged her body up to her chin in the pool. "Just kill me now…" she muttered.

"Is… is that why you work with Zeeplabors?" said Judy, meekly.

Lee sank even lower.

"It's okay if it is," Judy assured. "I mean, I've wanted to be a cop since I was a kit. I shouldn't judge."

Lee stared up at Judy. Was Hopps… eating crow? The possum poked her head out of the water. "Why?"

"Why what?" Judy tilted her head.

"Why did you want to be a cop?" There was no hint of judgment in Lee's voice.

Judy shrugged. "To make the world a better place. That's all there is to it."

Lee stared a little longer at Judy, then sighed. Judy couldn't tell what that meant.

Just then, a volleyball sailed over their heads and plopped into the water.

"Hang on, I'll get it!" Clawhauser's voice sounded from behind and soon enough, the cheetah rounded the hedge near the pool. "Oh hey, you guys!"

"Hi…?" said Judy.

"What's takin' you- oh!" Nick Wilde suddenly came around the hedge. "Carrots! I'd thought you two were still 'Naturalizing'!"

Lee returned to submerging her body up to her muzzle in the water. Judy soon joined her.

"Hey, you two wanna join in?" said Clawhauser, fishing the volleyball out of the pool.

"No thank you," Lee and Judy chorused.

"What, so going at each other in giant robots doesn't even faze you," said Nick, giving his trademark smirk. "But a friendly game of naturalist volleyball does? I thought you were made of sterner stuff, Carrots!"

Judy suddenly stood up, thoughts of modesty banished from her mind. "We'll see about that," she huffed, snatching the ball from Clawhauser's paw.

Lee stared after Judy as she sauntered off with Nick and Clawhauser.

Clearly, dealing with Judy was going to be a tricky prospect, but at least it wasn't completely hopeless.

All the same, if she was to bring Judy in line, Lee would have to be firm but encouraging, and above all maintain her own sense of discipline. After all, it was bad enough that Judy was a loose cannon; the last thing Lee needed was to sink to her level.

Lee sank into the pool until her ears were all that poked above the surface. How on earth had she forgotten to switch her loudspeakers off?!

* * *

"Epic! Absolutely epic! I swear, that rabbit could make a Labor dance the ballet!"

"You really think she's that good?"

"If she could catch that possum without injuring her, I'd say she is! No doubt about it, Unit 221 and its pilot will be our sample for Operation Crucible!"

"But the high-ups haven't approved Operation Crucible, Mr. Bright."

"Oh, they will… Just you wait. They will…"

* * *

 **THIS IS AN AU, BUT IN TEN YEARS, WHO KNOWS…?**

 _[OST-PV]_

 **NEXT TIME:**

 **Judy:** "Whoa! This must be a big one!"

 **Nick:** "Why?"

 **Judy:** "Buckminster wants both us _and_ Division 1 on the trail of this truck!"

 **Polecatsky:** "Apparently there's something special about the Labor it's carrying..."

 **Bogo:** "I don't like this... HQ's keeping something from us."

 **Nick:** "Okay, what kind of Labor is- _Oh no...!_ "

 **Beaverbrook:** "Woodchips...!"

 **Hylander:** "Why don't _we_ have that kind of firepower?!"

 **Duke Weaselton:** "What did I to ta deserve this?!"

 **Judy:** "On the next _Zeeplabor_ : 'The Belabored Bootlegger'! _Target: Locked on!_ "

* * *

 **Just one note: writing this ahead of time was meant to buy me time to completely write the next serial, but thanks to IRL commitments, it didn't buy me as much time as I thought it would, so don't be surprised if it takes a while for "The Belabored Bootlegger" to get uploaded.**


	17. The Belabored Bootlegger - Part I

**Hello, folks! I'm _back again!_ Sorry this one took so long. It took me a while to hear back from all my beta readers. I don't fault them; if they need time to whip this fic into shape, so be it.**

 **So be sure to give HanyouExorcistAlchemist48, SkyeLansing, and Ubernoner a big hand for helping me iron out the kinks for this serial!**

* * *

 **BACKGROUND MUSIC:**

1) Toshihiko Sahashi - "A Vision" - from _The Big O_

2) Toshihiko Sahashi - "Touch" - from _The Big O_

3) Micheal Giacchino - "Hopps Goes (After) the Weasel" - from _Zootopia_

4) Kenji Kawai - "Calamity Approaches from the Underworld" ("Ikai Yori Kitaru Tensai") - from _Earth Defense Dai-Guard_

* * *

 _[OST1]_

"All yer fav'rite movies! Right 'ere for ya!" crowed Duke Weaselton. "Whatever you need, I got!"

Thus far, the trade had been working well for the weasel. Usually he bootlegged recent movies, but he'd recently expanded into a new niche: pirating eastern animation. Who knew schmucks would pay so much for the stuff?

He'd eschewed some of the more central locations of Zootopia like Aquavitae Plaza and Old City Hall and instead gone for a spot in the lower reaches of the Rainforest District, adjacent to an up-and-coming neighborhood. Gentrifiers like the ones that lived here were often yuppies that were into the kind of products Weaselton peddled, but putting his back to a ZTA railyard meant that parties that wanted anonymity could approach with discretion.

His mother would've reprimanded him for having such a shady occupation, but the last time he'd tried "honest" work, he'd been canned pretty quickly – all that Labor certification had done was take three months of training out of his life, and it hadn't been _his_ fault those box-beams weren't secured properly!

Showed what his mother knew! He'd made some tidy profits from bootlegging since then. Weaselton was feeling especially proud this evening because a major eastern animation licenser and a streaming service had recently had a falling-out, meaning mammals used to the streaming service were more likely to turn to piracy.

The weasel began to whistle a few bars from some song from… oh, what was that Gilbear and Sowlivan thing? _The Pirates of Pawzance_? It was truly a blessed thing to be a pirate king.

"Why hello, good sir!" he said to a white-furred wolf that was passing by. Might as well hawk off a few more before turning in for the night. "What can I do ya for? I got all the faves right 'ere!"

The wolf ambled up to the stand. "E-ani?" he tilted his head.

"Eastern animation, 'dat is!" chuckled Weaselton.

"I know, I know," said the wolf. "I'm just wondering what you've got."

"What don't I got?" Weaselton grinned. "I got, uh… Let's see…" he pulled out a list of items that he had kept on several flash drives in his pockets. "I got _My Hero Otterdemia_ … I got _Claw Art Online_ … I got _Herd Psycho 500_ … I got …"

"The new _Gridmammal_ show?" The wolf's ears perked. "That one's _insanely_ recent. How'd you manage that?"

Weaselton smirked. "I got my ways."

"I'm not even sure that one's licensed…" the wolf murmured.

"Like I said, I got my ways," said Weaselton, smirk vanishing and brow furrowing. "Now c'mon! Make me an offer!"

"This wouldn't be…" The wolf leaned in closer. "…'under the counter,' would it?"

"Whadda you think?" Weaselton scowled. "Now d'ya want _Gridmammal_ or not?!"

"I _think_ …" The wolf suddenly pulled a ZPD badge out from under his jacket, smirking all the while. "That _you_ are under arrest for selling pirated content!"

Weaselton gawked.

 _[OST2]_

Thinking quickly, he hurled a copy of _Wreck-It-Rhino 2_ at the wolf and dashed out from behind the table, making for the open door of a blue semitrailer cab on the side of the road, dashing by the margay that had just gotten out of it. This cab pulled a flatbed that was obviously carrying a Labor of some sort underneath a grey tarpaulin.

The wolf cop barked at him to stop, but Weaselton just pulled the door shut, glad that the margay had left the key in the ignition, started the engine, and floored it, leaving the wolf in the dust.

* * *

"Fuzz!" Officer Dwayne Grizzoli growled as the truck got further and further away. The wolf yanked out his radio. "Officer Grizzoli to dispatch; I got a four-eight-seven; weasel bootlegger just stole a labor-carrier with cargo. Blue longnose cab; license plate: niner-seven-Oscar-Leopard-Yakee-"

"Please. There's no need," the margay driver suddenly piped up to Grizzoli. "I-I'm insured. It's alright!"

"Sir, it's _not_ alright," said Grizzoli. "Your truck's just been stolen, pal!"

 _"Uh, Grizzoli, what was that license plate?"_ Dispatch's voice came in.

"Sorry. Niner-seven-Oscar-Leopard-Yakee-one-four," replied Grizzoli. "Heading eastbound on Monsoon Road- _hey!_ " Grizzoli noticed the margay making a mad dash for the alley.

The wolf sprang into action, his longer legs making up the distance, and leapt at the margay.

* * *

"So we're chasing a _stolen_ stolen truck?" said Judy as she clambered into the labor carrier's cab.

"Pretty much," said Clawhauser, squeezing in beside her. "Apparently an IWF sympathizer nabbed the truck, then got it stolen right from under him."

"What kinda Labor was this truck carrying?" said Nick, making his way to his command car.

"No word on that yet," said Captain Bogo, opening the door to his smooth-top cruiser. "But Division 1's already been sent out. For some reason Buckminster wants us out there too."

Judy's nose twitched. Why send out both of the ZPD's Patrol Labor Divisions?

* * *

"Be ready for anything, you guys," said Captain Polecatsky, looking down the road where she knew that the truck would be coming. "We just know that the truck's carrying a Labor. We don't know what else it's carrying."

Division 1 had been set up behind a police roadblock on the A15 highway that cut through the Rainforest District. Even at night, the heat and humidity were enough to tighten the officers' unease.

Looming over her cruiser were Division 1's two venerable CPL-97S Python Zeeplabors. Compared to the Ingrowl, the Pythons were stockier and bulkier, and had no firearms. They featured a lightbar attached to the back, an even more generic muzzle on its faceplate, with a larger protective metal visor that sat atop the rounded head when not in use. The cockpits of the Pythons also provided less protection. Their pilots had to rely almost exclusively on direct visuals to operate their machines.

 _"Still wish we had better equipment,"_ grumbled Lieutenant Marvin Sanderson from Division 1's Labor Unit 1 – marked 211. _"I mean, if he's got something_ really _bleeding-edge, we're pretty much screwed without D2's Ingrowls."_

Hopefully not for long, thought Polecatsky. There were rumors that Bureau Chief Buckminster and the city were looking into acquiring replacements for the Pythons. Thus far, she hadn't been told anything to either confirm or deny it.

 _"Barker-Four-Four to Caravan 1,"_ squawked Polecatsky's radio. _"Suspect is approaching your position. Get ready for action."_

"This is Polecatsky; I copy," responded the skunk. She then shifted her channel to contact her subordinates. "He's coming now. You two get ready."

 _"Yes, ma'am!"_

* * *

Weaselton kept his paw on the gas as the truck surged forward. One advantage to stealing such a big vehicle was that the police found it hard to stop it without causing severe damage, so they kept their distance.

However, the only problem was, it was difficult to drive this thing in a pursuit without attracting attention. He had to find a way to take cover so he could make a getaway on foot.

Just then, he noticed the roadblock up ahead. The weasel's blood ran cold. The truck could probably ram through the three cruisers blocking the highway, but the two Zeeplabors were something else.

Weaselton began to slow the truck down, hoping to find an opening.

* * *

"Get ready to grab the truck if need be," said Polecatsky.

The semitrailer drew closer and closer. Polecatsky's cruiser, as well as her Division's command cars, was located off to the side of the road.

The skunk noticed the truck begin to slow down. "Okay, get in and arrest its movement," she ordered.

The two Pythons ambled forward cautiously. In the cab, Weaselton swerved, hoping to try and make a break for the soft shoulder. Spike McTachy's Unit 2 (marked 212) tried to reach for the cab, but was too slow and accidentally reached for the trailer instead.

 _[OST3]_

Suddenly, movement came from underneath the tarpaulin, and cords holding the tarp in place snapped undone as the Labor's arm suddenly swung out. Unlike many construction Labors, it had four-fingered hands, which it used to grab the Python's leg, holding it long enough to send it tumbling backward, then dragging it along the road a short distance before finally letting go.

"What the hell?!" McTachy sputtered as his Python tried to get up, but found that its leg mechanisms had been damaged from being dragged.

Sanderson's Unit 1 also stepped back. "Is that even a civilian Labor?!" the sand cat growled.

Polecatsky stared, jaw hanging open, as one of the cruisers forming the roadblock moved away in a panic, allowing the truck to pass them on the highway.

The skunk then reached for her receiver. "Polecatsky to all points; the Labor in the truck has a pilot. I repeat; the Labor in the truck has a pilot!"

* * *

"What?!" said Lee into her receiver. She and the rest of Division 2 were decking up on the A15 a short distance away from Division 1. They were in the midst of establishing a second roadblock.

Bogo had been called to Precinct 34, which was acting as a temporary headquarters for coordinating police response to the incident. Polecatsky would later be called in as well.

"Here it comes," said Hylander, rocking Beaverbrook's carrier as Unit 2 hastily stepped out of the payload bay. Hylander quickly pulled out his revolver cannon.

"Hylander, don't shoot," barked Lee.

More of the tarp's wires came undone as a sleek, white-and-blue machine started to raise itself from the bed of the still-moving truck. This machine had slender limbs and an angular design. Its head featured a mouthplate and a metal visor with three slits in it.

In the cab, Weaselton sensed the movement of the rising Labor and tried to ensure the truck didn't swerve out of control. This ironically caused the semitrailer to move more erratically as he overcompensated slightly.

Judy's Unit 1 unsheathed her machine's stun-stick and charged forward, but the unknown Labor swung its arm at her, giving her machine a clothesline, knocking Robin onto its back.

Stunned at what had just happened, Unit 2 stood back, letting the truck pass.

Clawhauser's carrier passed in front of Robin. "Hopps, get on," the cheetah said into his radio. "We can still chase 'im!"

Judy complied, making Unit 1 clamber into its carrier's payload bay. Unit 2 did the same, climbing into Beaverbrook's carrier.

"Alright, let's get moving!" said Judy as her carrier motored after Hylander's, followed by the two command cars.

The enemy Labor's semi had a long head start, so the pilot of Labor itself didn't seem that unnerved by the two carriers. Still, Weaselton kept his pedal to the metal in the cab.

"You're cleared for firearms," said Lee into her receiver. "But use caution."

"Yes, ma'am!" Hylander fired off two shots – both missed.

"Damnit," growled the hyrax, trying to raise his machine higher to get better aim. However, just as he did so, his monitors quickly shifted to static. "The hell?!" he sputtered.

"Congratulations, Hylander," groaned Nick. "You just got decapitated by a stationary object."

Sure enough, as Hylander had raised Unit 2 up, Beaverbrook's carrier had begun passing under an overpass. Robin had ducked down, but Unit 2's head had been smashed clean off after connecting with the side of the bridge.

"Idiot," muttered Lee.

Hylander raised his cockpit, now relying on "direct" visuals.

The two carriers began to gain speed on the stolen truck as they entered a tunnel that ran through Bromeliad Ridge, which divided the Rainforest District from the Meadowlands. The errant Labor turned itself around on the trailer to face the pursuers, legs dangling off the back of the trailer.

"Try and take out its arms," ordered Lee.

Judy fired a shot from her revolver cannon and missed. In the semi's cab, Weaselton's heart skipped a beat when the speed of the passing giant bullet crazed the passenger-side window.

 _[OST4]_

Then, a compartment opened on the enemy Labor's right shoulder, from which it drew from this compartment a large, Labor-sized pistol – a revolver cannon.

"Oh, no…" muttered Clawhauser.

"That thing's armed?!" squeaked Beaverbrook.

"He's bluffing," said Nick. "A Labor in transit wouldn't carry loaded weapons."

The enemy machine had obviously not heard Nick. It tried to steady the gun before pulling the trigger. A loud bang filled the tunnel, and the lightbar on Unit 1's right shoulder was sheared off by the gunshot.

"He was bluffing, huh?!" growled Judy. "He was bluffing?!"

* * *

 **NAMES:**

Dwayne Grizzoli: You're probably wondering why I made Grizzoli a wolf. Well, in the movie, when Bogo hands case files to "Officers Grizzoli and Delgato," it's a lion and a _wolf_ that pick up the file. Originally, I was willing to ignore the idea, but then I saw fanart of Grizzoli depicting him as being adopted by a bear father, so the idea of "Grizzoli" being the wolf became more palatable.


	18. The Belabored Bootlegger - Part II

**Sorry! No background music this time. In fact, I might cut down on BGM in future chapters, or (if it comes to it) rewrites of past chapters.**

* * *

"What do we do?!" moaned Clawhauser. "We aren't trained to deal with Labors packing heat!"

"Pull back. Let's give it some space 'til we get out of this tunnel," ordered Lee. "Hopefully we'll have a plan then."

The two carriers began to slow down just as two more shots rang out from the rogue Labor's gun. Thankfully, both missed the Ingrowls, but one struck the roof of the tunnel, causing debris to fall in front of the ZPD carriers. Clawhauser and Beaverbrook hit the brakes instantly – the latter's trailer coming within inches of the rubble. The two command cars came to a halt soon after.

"Ribbons," Lee seethed.

"Look at this shell!" Hylander's Unit 2 had stepped off its trailer, picking up a spent cartridge that had come from the enemy Labor's revolver cannon. "This is _not_ 38 millimeters! This has got to be 40- no, 42!"

"42 mil?" groaned Nick. "Who made that thing?"

* * *

"Megafauna Enterprises?" said Bogo.

"Yes," said Bureau Chief Buckminster, now standing in the Captain's office at Precinct 34 with his two Captains. The furniture in this precinct had obviously been designed for larger mammals, so Polecatsky looked uncomfortably small. Captain Emma Couguarez of Precinct 34 was also present, as was Sergeant Frank McHorn, representing Precinct 1 – the inter-Borough precinct.

Buckminster continued. "This could have major ramifications for Special Vehicles, particularly for your Division, Polecatsky."

"How come?" the skunk raised an eyebrow.

"The Labor in question…" explained Buckminster. "…is an MRX-70, a prototype police patrol Labor that was on its way to Megafauna's proving grounds on the outskirts of the city. The truck was _first_ stolen a few hours before this weasel character got involved. The original driver was found bound and gagged in a gas station janitor's closet."

"A police labor?" said Polecatsky. "Are you saying that…?"

"Yes," said Buckminster, glancing down at Polecatsky. "The city's considering phasing out your Division's Pythons in favor of the MRX-70."

"Oh…" Polecatsky averted her eyes. So the rumors _were_ true.

"Yes, I have the paperwork right here," said Buckminster, handing Polecatsky a thick wad of forms.

"So we're up against bleeding-edge police hardware in the hands of unhinged IWF terrorists?" McHorn moaned, the rhinoceros burying his head in his hand.

"In a nutshell," said Buckminster, crossing his arms behind his back. "But we may not be alone. Megafauna Security Services has offered their assistance."

"The makers?" said Couguarez, the puma's tail twitching. "What have they got?"

"Well, the new Growl-Bears, for one," said Buckminster. "Not up to the Ingrowl or MRX-70, but sufficient. They say they're still mobilizing-" The elk broke off. "Do you have a problem, Bogo?"

Buckminster had caught the sound of Bogo snorting.

The buffalo sighed. "I'm just unsure about involving private parties in this chase, sir."

"Considering how new this Labor is – not to mention well-armed," said Buckminster, "I'm not taking any chances. Besides which, we'd have to wait for a Code 37 form approval from the Otterside County Police if this truck gets past city limits. MSS doesn't have to worry about that."

"Sir," said Bogo. "This was exactly the sort of thing Code 37 was designed for. We're the only Zeeplabors in the country."

"I'm sorry, Bogo," said Buckminster. "But unless Otterside County asks us directly, you'd have to file a Code 37 request yourself, and that would take time." Buckminster's eyes narrowed. "Besides which, they might not approve of having extra Labors gallivanting around their territory."

Bogo grimaced. No doubt a PR junkie like Buckminster was thinking of the negative publicity from Division 2's first few deployments. He probably figured it was best to wash his hooves of the matter by passing the buck onto MSS.

"You think he'll make it out?" said Polecatsky.

"He's closing in on city limits as it is," said Couguarez, gesturing to a map of the Meadowlands on the wall behind her. "Borough Chief Cervussen says he's putting up roadblocks on the A15 and A12 leading out of the city, so he won't be getting out of the city by any of the major highways, and all Climate Wall access points are heavily monitored, so he can't get into Tundratown without us knowing.

"There's only one problem," said Couguarez, pointing to the northwestern edge of the Meadowlands. "There's quite a few access roads to either exurbs or industrial facilities around this area. He _could_ conceivably squeeze his way through this region. Cervussen and I have got patrols going around this area."

"And Precinct 1's lending a few extra cars," piped up McHorn.

"Right," said DePardus, "But I'm worried that they might not have much more luck than SV2 did on the A15. Without Zeeplabors, the most they could do is tell us where the truck and/or Labor are."

"Well, that's a good thing, isn't it?" huffed Buckminster. "As long as that truck is here in the city, we stand a better chance of nabbing those crooks."

"With respect, sir," said Polecatsky. "As long as that machine is in the city, and has a pilot willing to damage city property, we run the risk of civilian casualties."

Buckminster winced.

"Where's the truck now?" said Bogo

"By the time we got choppers in the sky, the thing had up and vanished," said McHorn. "Witness reports have a vehicle matching the semi's description heading off the A15. The good news is that the Labor started transmitting GPS coordinates when it activated against Division 1. I've got the coordinates on my phone now." The rhino glanced at his device. "Yeah… He's outpaced the cruisers, but it looks like he's stopped in the industrial park. If we're lucky, the pilot's decided to cut his losses and dump the fuzzin' thing."

"Good to know," said Bogo, glancing over McHorn's shoulder turning to Buckminster. "But that's still too close to city limits for my liking, so I'd like to request permission to exit the city under Code 37."

Buckminster sighed. "You do realize that approving, delaying, or denying that permission would be up to Otterside County's discretion?"

"I do," said Bogo, his gaze seeming to bore a hole into the opposite wall. "But that just means I have nothing to lose by applying for it now."

* * *

"'Dis ain't how it was supposed ta happen!" groaned Duke Weaselton, backing away from the badger walking up to him. "I just wanted a getaway car! I didn't know 'bout none 'a this!"

He'd pulled the truck over after making sure he'd lost any pursuers and tried running away from the truck, only for the badger to climb out of the stolen Labor and confront him, backing him against a chain link fence.

"Just answer the damn question!" growled the badger. "Who are you and where's Tigrillo?!"

"Who, the cat?" said Weaselton. "I just saw the door was open and I jumped in and hit the gas! I didn't know nuttin' 'bout no fancy Labor!"

"Are you with the Liberty Army?" the badger raised an eyebrow.

"The what?"

"The Liberty Army! The right hand of the Inner Wild Front!" grumbled the badger. "How do you not know that?!"

"I don't deal with the IWF," said Weaselton. "I just copy an' sell movies."

"A bootlegger?" The badger moved his muzzle in closer. "So you'd say you're on the low end of the social totem pole?"

"Well, uh… I'd say so?" What was this wacko getting at?

"So… You're a victim same as the rest of us!" The badger gave a hearty pat on the back to his fellow mustelid. "A victim of the illusion of harmony and the hypocrisy of the elites!"

"Ah, well, uh…" What was Weaselton supposed to make of this?

"Come along, comrade!" chuckled the badger, clapping his paws together. "We've got work to do!"

* * *

"Adrian?" Captain Bogo looked up from Precinct 34's near-empty water cooler to glance at Captain Polecatsky, who was walking up to him, brow furrowed. "I want to get to the bottom of this. Buckminster says the MSS Labors are still en route, right?"

"Yes?" The buffalo arched an eyebrow.

"But I've just got word from some of the rank-and-file here that two unknown Labors were recently sighted in an industrial park near the exit to the A15 tunnel." The skunk promptly did a handstand, which told Bogo that something was wrong. "The thing is, the descriptions of these Labors match Megafauna Growl-Bears."

Bogo straightened up. "You think MSS is acting on their own?"

"That's what I thought, too." Polecatsky began 'pacing' up and down the floor, still in her handstand. "But why would they? The MRX is their Labor. They want it back as much as we do. They have more to gain by working _with_ us. Why go behind our backs?"

"Why indeed…?" Bogo stared at the bottom of his now-empty paper cup

"You don't know?" Polecatsky got back on her feet.

"No." Bogo took one last swig of water. "But I think I know someone who might."

Just then, McHorn came thundering down the hall, eyes affixed to his phone.

"What's going on?" said Polecatsky.

"Target's on the move again," panted the rhino. "The MRX-70's makin' for one of the industrial side streets leading out of city limits."

"Any word on my clearance from Otterside County?" said Bogo.

"Still processing, last I checked," McHorn glanced at his phone again. "You'd have to talk to Buckminster."

"Does he know the MRX is moving?" asked Bogo.

"I just told him," said McHorn as he started continuing on his way to Captain Couguarez's office.

"I see…" Bogo pinched the bridge of his nose, crushing the paper cup in his other hoof.

* * *

 _"So why are you asking me about this Labor?"_ came Nick Wilde's voice through Bogo's receiver.

"You worked at I.H.I.; you know more about the big Labor-makers," explained Bogo.

He and Polecatsky had discreetly moved to Bogo's cruiser, situated in the crowded parking lot of Precinct 34. Now Polecatsky sat in the passenger seat while Bogo hailed his officer.

 _"Yeah, well, I never actually worked at Megafauna. I just caught whispers about the place, so all I got was the occasional rumor about what they were doing,"_ explained the fox. _"And security there is extra-tight, so it's real hard to tell what's true and what's not."_

"It'll have to do," said Bogo. "Now tell me, Wilde; why would Megafauna be so hell-bent on retrieving the MRX-70 before us?"

 _"Who knows?"_ said Nick. _"There's been all sorts of rumors and allegations of shady business practices at Megafauna, but no one's ever been able to prove anything – plausible deniability and all that."_

Polecatsky's brow furrowed.

 _"Although…"_ continued Nick. _"…Megafauna's recently rolled out this state-of-the-art military Labor, the Furocken. Since then, there've been rumors that they're planning to make even bigger and badder military hardware. After seeing that 42-millimeter handgun the MRX-70's packing, I'm a little more willing to believe that."_

Bogo suddenly heard a rustling sound as Polecatsky began frenetically leafing through the papers Buckminster had given her. Eventually, she clambered onto the dashboard of Bogo's cruiser and grabbed the buffalo's eyeglasses. Then Polecatsky jumped back down and began using the glasses as a makeshift magnifying glass to examine some of the fine print. The more she read, the more her teeth began to clench.

"Unbelievable…!" the skunk seethed under her breath.

"What?" said Bogo.

"Excuse me." Polecatsky laid down the glasses, opened the door to the cruiser, and began walking on her hands back toward Precinct 34.

 _"What's wrong, sir?"_ came Nick's voice.

"Nothing," grunted Bogo. "Keep me posted. I'll let you know when we get clearance for city limits. Over and out."

Just then, there was a knock on Bogo's car door. He leaned out his window and stared down at Lieutenant Marvin Sanderson.

"Oh, it's you, sir," piped up the sand cat. "I was wondering if you'd seen Captain Polecatsky."

"You just missed her," said Bogo. "She's inside."

"Thank you, sir." Sanderson began to amble off.

"Sanderson," Bogo opened his door so he could lean out to properly see the cat. "Just out of curiosity, what are your thoughts about Division 1's Pythons?"

"Well, they get the job done…" Sanderson shrugged. "But even some civilian Labors are starting to outpace 'em. The sooner we get some new tech like your Ingrowls, the better."

"Have you heard about this Labor we're chasing?" said Bogo.

"That it's a prototype of something we're gonna get? Yeah. I did."

"I see…" Bogo sighed. "You might find Polecatsky wherever Buckminster is. I'd suggest talking to Captain Couguarez if you can't find either of them."

"Thank you, sir." Sanderson turned to leave.

Bogo had the feeling that something big was in the works. If he just knew _what_ …!

* * *

Duke Weaselton's teeth chattered as the truck trundled down the deserted side streets. Brock – the badger in the MRX-70 – had instructed Weaselton to continue driving the truck to Beachville, where a ship was waiting to carry the stolen Labor to mammals willing to buy it. The money would be used to fund the IWF at large.

Hopefully he then he could find a way out of the country and forget this whole mess ever happened.

A smile etched its way onto the weasel's muzzle when the truck passed a "CITY LIMITS" sign. Hopefully now he wouldn't have to worry about the cops.

The truck passed through a wooded area, eventually passing onto a dirt road.

Just then, lights appeared out the right side of the truck. Before Weaselton could react, there was a loud crunch, and the weasel suddenly felt the truck jerk violently to the left. The last thing he saw was the ditch on the side of the road.

* * *

When Weaselton came to, he felt the glass of the driver's-side window against his cheek. As his senses returned, it slowly came to him that the truck was now tipped onto its side at a 45-degree angle as one side leaned against the wall of the ditch.

Groggily, Weaselton pulled himself up into the other side of the cab, and heaved the passenger-side door open. As he clambered out, he saw the looming form of a Labor ambling toward the trailer, with another close behind.

It had a very short, squat head, a pair of disproportionally long arms with three-fingered hands, and smooth, rounded armor. The only "face" it had was an obvious camera that poked out of the head.

Obviously, one of them had slammed into the truck and forced it off the road.

Whoever these guys were, they were _not_ with the ZPD. They'd probably do more to him and Brock than escort them out of here in cuffs.

Quickly, he jumped off the side of the truck, slid down the roof, and ran over to where the MRX-70 had collapsed beside the ditch. After a short bit of rooting around, he yanked on an emergency release switch for the cockpit, and the hatch opened.

Inside, Brock was slumped against the side of the cockpit.

"Hey, y'alright?!" Weaselton tried to rouse the badger.

Brock wearily raised his head. "Y-you gotta get this thing to Beachville… I'm counting on you…"

The badger's head slumped back down. Weaselton pressed his head against his chest. Brock was still breathing. His injuries obviously weren't life-threatening.

Weaselton's heart stopped as he heard the two unidentified Labors approaching the truck. Thinking quickly, he dragged Brock out of the cockpit, depositing him beside the truck's cab, then dashed back inside.

In the cockpit, he quickly booted the MRX-70 up. He hadn't driven Labors for long, but he still figured it was enough to get this crate up and running.

Shakily, the MRX-70 stood up just as the two new Labors approached. After switching on his machine's lights, Weaselton took in the 'MSS' printed in white lettering across the dark green machines' chests.

The weasel quickly stumbled the MRX-70 forward, crashing through the trees.

* * *

As one of the MSS Growl-Bears went after the MRX-70, the other approached the toppled semitrailer.

"Hind 1 to Trap 1," reported its hare pilot. "The truck has been apprehended. The Doll is mobile and is making a break for it. Hind 2 is in pursuit."

 _"What about the Package?"_ came Trap 1's voice.

The hare knelt down his Growl-Bear, opened up his cockpit, and then stepped out to have a look at the truck's trailer. Quickly, he felt around the bed of the trailer before pulling up the lid of a secret compartment.

"Package secure," said the hare, taking in the range of prototype missiles (thankfully unloaded), before abruptly closing the lid. "One of the thieves is out cold by the road. He hasn't seen anything as far as I can tell."

 _"Good,"_ said Trap 1. _"Removal crew is en route. Place the thief you have in your custody. Make sure he knows nothing. Once the removal crew arrives, join Hind 2. Over and out."_

* * *

Lieutenant Marvin Sanderson wasn't used to Precinct 34's office layout, and having to dodge the countless larger mammals around him didn't help.

Eventually, he caught the sound of his Captain's voice and hasted toward the open door of Precinct 34's bullpen.

However, Sanderson stopped before entering the room, as he heard the voice of Bureau Chief Buckminster as well. No sense interrupting in case their meeting was important.

Sanderson listened intently for when the conversation would end, but soon enough, his ears pricked as his superior's voice grew more intense.

"You're making too much out of this, Polecatsky," said Buckminster.

"Sir, I am not," said Polecatsky. "I have the paperwork right here. It says that only Megafauna's in-house mechanics would be permitted to so much as touch the MRX-70 outside of deployments. It also says that those mechanics have the right to not disclose any information on the Labor's workings to the pilots or any other police staff."

"So?"

" _So_ , my mammals need to know how their machines work! It's common sense!" said Polecatsky. "I used to be a Forward – you have to know your Labor like the back of your paw. If I were saddled with a machine like this, I'd rather find out about its workings and OS in the hangar than out on a deployment."

"I'm sure they won't withhold that much from you, Polecatsky," said Buckminster, a note of annoyance edging into his voice.

"That's not all, sir," said Polecatsky. Sanderson then caught the sounds of rustling papers before the Captain continued. "It also says that Megafauna will retain the rights to all movement data generated by the pilots – in fact, that it will be secured offsite in Megafauna's proving grounds. My mammals won't even be given their key drives when on standby."

"Polecatsky," Buckminster huffed. "This is purely a security precaution so that Megafauna can develop better police Labors in future. It's not too different from Division 2's arrangement from I.H.I."

"Are you sure it's police Labors, sir?" Acid seeped into Polecatsky's voice. "Division 2's arrangement with Inaba only extends to general mechanical performance. The ZPD still has the rights to the Ingrowls' movement data. How will I know what Megafauna is doing with my mammals' data?"

Buckminster paused. "What are you getting at, Polecatsky?"

The skunk spoke firmly and slowly. "What assurance do I have that Division 1's movement data won't be used in the development of non-police Labors without their consent?"

Buckminster laughed. "Non-police Labors? Like what?"

Polecatsky's voice was cold as ice. "Like military Labors."

Silence fell in the bullpen.

Marvin Sanderson's teeth clenched, and his ears folded back. His tail twitched every which way as he edged away from the door.

* * *

In the depths of the night, the MRX-70 surged onward. Weaselton could count his lucky stars that the prototype Zeeplabor was such a fast runner.

Still, his machine's sensors (hallelujah for powerful sensors!) could pick out the Growl-Bear behind him.

Weaselton thought about pulling out the handgun, but decided against it. Best not give the Growl-Bear time to catch up. Besides, Weaselton had barely been able to handle a section of concrete piping. He wasn't about to try his luck with a Labor-sized handgun – he'd never even handled a mammal-sized gun.

As the MRX-70, stumbled through the thick woods, Weaselton did a double-take as he realized he was beginning to lose the pursuing Labor. Sure, the ground had started to incline downward, but still – this crazy Labor really was something!

Grinning, the weasel contemplated stripping it for parts and selling it.

But suddenly, his machine started blaring alarms. The words 'PROXIMITY ALERT' had been flashing over his screen in yellow letters since going into the woods. No doubt it was because of the trees. But this time, the lettering turned red as the alarm sounded.

Through the night vision-equipped monitors, Weaselton caught the sight of another Labor heading his way. His hands flew to the control levers, and tried to get the machine to stop, but he hadn't accounted for the downward slope, and the MRX-70 tumbled right into the other machine.

Weaselton made his machine clamber off the interloper, regarding their Labor. It was a pale blue, Inaba-made ASV-99 'Boxer' – a construction Labor he'd seen a couple times in his training.

The Boxer was a lanky machine with tubular limbs and a "head" that was really a mounting point for two powerful lights – one of which had broken in the collision.

The newcomer's glass-shielded cockpit opened and a coati wearing glasses poked his head out. "Nice to see you too, Brock," he grumbled, rubbing his head. "When we heard the news about a rogue Labor in the Meadowlands, we knew it had to be you and the MRX. I offered to go and back you up."

Weaselton gawked. _More_ IWF nutjobs?!

Suddenly, there was the sound of rocks tumbling down the hillside. Weaselton clenched his teeth as he realized he'd forgotten about the Growl-Bear.

The MRX-70 and Boxer backed away a little as the Growl-Bear slid down to the bottom of the hill.

What else could happen tonight?!

Just then, a set of lights cut through the trees. All three Labors looked up to the source, to see that the Labor frontal lamps were accompanied by flashing red-and-blue lights of a ZPD Ingrowl.

"This is the Police!" came a female voice. "Power down your Labors immediately!"


	19. The Belabored Bootlegger - Part III

**Alright, time to finish this sucker off!**

* * *

 **BACKGROUND MUSIC:**

1) Kenji Kawai - "EACH OTHER" - from _Mobile Suit Gundam 00_

2) Kenji Kawai - "Shadow of Griffon" - from _Patlabor - The Mobile Police_ TV series

PV) Kenji Kawai - "Scramble" - from _Patlabor - The Mobile Police_ TV series

* * *

Inside Robin, Judy Hopps's hands tightly gripped the control levers. Had Captain Bogo's Code 37 clearance finished processing any later, the trail might have gone cold. Furthermore, Unit 2's decapitation necessitated sending it back to SV2 for repairs, so it was down to her, Nick, and Robin now.

"I repeat," Judy announced. "If you do not power down your machines and step out of your cockpits, we will have to use force."

"Officers," a voice came through Robin's comm. systems – doubtless from the MSS Growl-Bear. "I'm with Megafauna Security Services. The MRX-70 is in _my_ custody."

"It doesn't look like it to me," said Nick, poking his head out of his command car a safe distance behind Unit 1. "And since it's two-against-one without us, I'd say you're outgunned."

"You're outside your jurisdiction." The MSS pilot's voice was very level, but annoyance was beginning to edge into it.

"We have official clearance from Otterside County PD," said Judy. "This case is _our_ responsibility now."

"There is nothing preventing me from making a citizen's arrest," said the MSS pilot.

"Except the fact that they're getting away!" Nick piped up, pointing to the Boxer, which was shoving the MRX-70 away from the other two Labors.

"Hey!" Judy and the Growl-Bear pilot chorused, as their machines charged after the two rogue Labors.

* * *

"We gotta find a way to get these guys off our tails!" panted the coati, using the Boxer's loudspeakers to communicate with the MRX-70. "Your gun! Can't you use your gun?!"

"I dunno how to use it," said Weaselton, using his own speakers.

"What th-" The Boxer suddenly stopped. "You're not Brock! What's going on here?!"

Just then, the Growl-Bear jumped the Boxer from behind, and the two machines began grappling with each other.

Weaselton tried to back away from the struggle, but suddenly his machine's proximity sensors went red again, and he narrowly dodged a lunge from Robin's stun-stick.

"He's mine!" growled the otter piloting the MSS Growl-Bear, suddenly abandoning the Boxer to dash towards the MRX-70.

"S-stay back," grumbled Weaselton, backing the MRX-70 away before breaking into a full-tilt run.

"Hey!" said Judy.

"Get back here!" spat the coati.

"Stop!" yelled the MSS otter.

"Can't we all just get along?!" muttered Nick, as he started his command car after the four Labors.

Weaselton screamed. What had he done to deserve this?!

Not being built for running, the Boxer was easily outpaced by the Growl-Bear and Ingrowl. However, as the Growl-Bear passed it, the coati made his machine deliver a punch that knocked the MSS Labor on the ground. But this came at the expense of the Boxer's left hand, which couldn't take the sudden shock of the punch, and now the fingers dangled uselessly.

Before the dazed, but more heavily armored Growl-Bear could pick itself up though, the Boxer had already broken into a sprint after the other two Labors.

* * *

Lieutenant Marvin Sanderson walked up to his superior, who was sipping from a coffee cup in Precinct 34's breakroom, making an effort to distance herself from the larger officers.

"Captain? Are you alright?" said Sanderson.

"I'm fine…" Polecatsky sighed before staring at Sanderson. "Sanderson, I know you've been eager to ditch the Pythons. Does the upgrade really mean that much to you?"

The sand cat bit his tongue, then averted his eyes, ears drooping. "I overheard your talk with Buckminster."

Polecatsky seemed to deflate, tail dropping. "You know all about it then…"

"Not _all_ about it," said Sanderson. "Where do things stand with you and Buckminster now?"

"He's still dead set on it," said Polecatsky. "Better question is; where does it stand with you and the others?"

Sanderson sighed. "Speaking for myself, much as I'd like the new tech, I'd rather know what kind of machine I'm piloting."

Polecatsky shook her head and studied her cup. "But where does that leave us now? Megafauna's got Buckminster's ear. What do _we_ have?"

Suddenly, a voice piped up as Howard Hylander and Earl Beaverbrook entered the room.

"Forty-two millimeters, Beaverbrook! Forty-two!" chuckled Hylander. "Could you imagine if we had ammunition like that?"

Sanderson then caught a kangaroo officer whispering to an elephant. "Wasn't that hyrax the one that got his head taken off by an overpass or somethin'?"

"Yeah," muttered the elephant officer. "Division 2's a bunch of nutcases from what I hear."

Sanderson then turned back to Polecatsky. "Captain? I might have an idea…"

* * *

One thing Judy was grateful for was the Ingrowl's impressive speed and agility. She didn't think she'd have been able to get over the uneven, overgrown terrain of the woods otherwise.

Still, the MRX-70 was also fast and agile. Judy contemplated using her revolver cannon, but decided against it. Getting shots off in a Labor while running was risky. Besides, close-quarters combat was her specialty.

The chase continued downhill until they reached a road. In the MRX, Weaselton breathed a little easier. Running had been hard enough in the woods. Hopefully he'd get a little faster now.

Sparks flew from the MRX-70's feet as it skidded into a sharp on the asphalt and then bolted down the road. However, Robin and its command car were close behind.

 _[OST1]_

Soon, the sprinting Labors reached a bridge that ran over a gully, with a fast-flowing river at the bottom.

Weaselton's proximity alarms went off again and he ducked a right hook from Robin, then took a few steps back as the Ingrowl reached for its stun stick.

Just then, an idea occurred to Weaselton. He knew how he could get out of the situation – but he'd have to put some space between him and the cops first. If he could just- _there!_

"Stay back!" said Weaselton as the shoulder compartment opened and the MRX-70 pulled out the massive handgun, pointing it at the Zeeplabor. "I-I got a gun!"

Judy made Robin take a step back.

Weaselton sighed as Robin began to back off. Now he could just step to the edge of the bridge and- _Aw fitch_ the cop-Labor was pulling its gun out.

"I-I ain't bluffin'," squeaked Weaselton.

Somehow Judy doubted that. Nick had too. Hopefully the standoff would sweat the weasel into giving up.

The two Labors stood on opposite ends of the bridge, guns trained at each other as the sunrise trickled over the wooded hills, onto the bridge.

Suddenly, Nick's voice squawked through Robin's comms systems. "Carrots, watch your six!"

Judy swiveled Robin around, but was unable to fully react in time. Robin was soon thrust backward, slamming into the MRX. The latter was able to peer over the Ingrowl's shoulder to perceive the Boxer, which had slammed its shoulder into Robin's chest, forcing it into the MRX.

"I'll take care of you both," growled the coati, grabbing Robin by the head, and swinging it into the guardrail at the side of the bridge. Judy's revolver cannon tumbled over the side and into the water.

"Lousy cops!" yelled the coati, making the Boxer grab its flailing left arm, yanking it until it ripped off at the shoulder, then slamming the arm into Robin like a mace over and over.

Judy was swung around in her cockpit as static flickered across her monitors. Obviously the Ingrowl's head-mounted cameras were taking damage, and she couldn't raise her cockpit and rely on direct visuals, lest she get hit directly by the Boxer's severed arm. An attack with her stun stick would be difficult under these conditions.

Just then, there was a terrific bang, and the Boxer suddenly dropped the severed arm, hydraulic fluid spewing from its right shoulder. The coati's Labor turned to see the MRX-70, its gun shakily pointed at the Boxer. Now both the Boxer's arms were disabled.

"I knew it!" said the coati. "You're a plant!"

The Boxer then tried charging the MRX-70, ready to headbutt the other machine. Weaselton promptly fired another shot that ripped through the Boxer's hip, and it fell to the ground, unable to stand up.

Judy groggily made Robin stand up. Why had the MRX-70 saved her?

* * *

Duke Weaselton panted, the MRX-70's revolver cannon still trained on the prostrate Boxer before dropping the gun entirely. Why had he just saved the Zeeplabor?! He could've just run off while the other two Labors were fighting each other.

Just then, the sound of Labor-sized footsteps approached the bridge. It was the MSS Growl-Bear. Suddenly, Robin swung forward and before Weaselton could react, the MRX-70's arms were pinned behind its back, and it was forced to kneel down beside the side of the bridge.

"Power down your Labor immediately," said Judy over her loudspeakers. Weaselton sighed, then reached for the Labor's power switch. No sense resisting now.

Robin's head then turned to the Growl-Bear. "This Labor and its pilot are now in police custody," said Judy. "Any attempt to take it now will be considered obstruction of an officer in the course of their duties."

The Growl-Bear ground to a halt.

"Sorry," said Nick Wilde through his command car's loudspeakers. "That's all, folks! Nothin' to see here. Move along!"

Weaselton sighed, but then realized something. The MRX-70 was facing the side of the bridge. His original plan sprang to mind again.

Thinking quickly, he opened the hatch, then leapt out of the machine.

"Hey!" Judy gasped, taking Robin's hands off the MRX-70. Too late; Weaselton had flown over the bridge's guardrail, and landed in the water with a splash.

Judy and Nick looked downriver, unable to see anything below the white-tipped rapids. There was no sign that the weasel was coming back up.

* * *

"I see," said Bogo into his radio as he stood outside the Precinct 34 building. "No, don't worry about that. He's without his Labor now. Dead or alive, you'd best leave him to Otterside County. Just report back to SV2. Over and out."

Bogo pocketed his radio and sighed. At least the MRX-70 had been retrieved.

"Adrian?" Bogo turned to see Polecatsky ambling up to him.

"Any progress with Buckminster?" said Bogo.

"I think so," said Polecatsky, glancing up at the dawn. "He's a lot less willing to accept Megafauna's demands now."

Bogo smiled. "How'd you manage it?"

Polecatsky chuckled, eyebrow twitching. "It's embarrassing, really."

"What?" said Bogo. Polecatsky hadn't sacrificed something over this, had she?

The skunk sighed. "I told Buckminster I would only accept the MRX-70s on the condition that you and your team would be equipped with the new 42-mil revolver cannons."

Bogo's brow rose.

Polecatsky grimaced. "You're not mad, are you?"

"It's a cynical move," sighed Bogo. "But honestly, I'd have done the same thing. I'll worry about my Division's reputation; you worry about yours."

* * *

Duke Weaselton's eyes nervously flickered around the bus station waiting room.

Hedgehog Grove was pretty much a hole in the wall. Its 'bus station' was barely a wooden shack. Duke could count his lucky stars he'd washed up here. He had just enough money to buy himself a bus ticket to San Ardillo. Hopefully there, he'd find himself a way across the border. It'd be hard setting himself up in El Centro, but now that he'd gotten himself mixed up with the IWF, Zootopia – hell, Malaika was just too hot to hold him.

Still, that big goat with the twirly horns sitting across from him (what did they call them? Markers?) creeped the weasel out, the way he just sat there with his arms crossed. And what was with that red panda sitting next to him? Did he have to play that stupid game app so loudly?!

Still, Weaselton could say nothing; no sense calling attention to himself.

However, the glasses-wearing red panda had other ideas. "WHOO-HOO! New high score!" he yelled, before getting out of the bench and making laser noises while pantomiming guns.

"Victory selfie!" piped up the panda, throwing an arm around Weaselton and snapping a photo of his toothily grinning muzzle smushed next to Weaselton's utterly flabbergasted face.

 _[OST2]_

It took a few seconds for the events to sink in. "Uh…" Weaselton stared at the phone. "Yer not gonna post 'dat photo anywhere are ya?"

"Sure!" said the red panda, grinning as he sat back in the bench and typed into his phone. "This is _so_ going on Chitter! 'Just got new hashtag-CandyCruncher HS here hashtag-HedgehogGrove w/ weasel fugitive!"

Weaselton's eyes bulged.

The red panda continued, not taking his eyes off his phone. "It is _so_ incredulous that the ZPD has its own Chitter account – the local PD too. All I have to do is tag 'em all!"

Weaselton dashed for the waiting room door, but the twirly-horned goat (a markhor, Weaselton would later learn) had suddenly put himself in front of the door and grabbed the weasel by the collar of his tank top.

"Ooh, gotta snap this!" the red panda then took a picture of the Weasel dangling as the burly markhor raised him off the floor. "That'd make a great follow-up once I send that first Chit!"

"W-whaddya want?!" said Weaselton, trying to wiggle his way out of the markhor's hoof. "I got no money!"

"Oh, I don't want money," said the panda, getting off the bench and walking up to Weaselton, _finally_ taking his eyes off his phone. "Actually, I'd like to _give_ you money!"

"Say what?" Weaselton stopped struggling, staring at the red panda, jaw hanging open.

"I've got a _humongo_ job offer for you," said the panda, adjusting his glasses. "I mean, since you're, you know, on the run from the law and you've just got experience working with Megafauna tech, I'd say you're a good fit for this kind of work – and wait 'til you see our dental plan; it's just _ca-ray-zaaayyy!_ "

Weaselton's head cocked.

The red panda's bright blue eyes suddenly narrowed, though his grin remained. "Though of course, I _could_ just call up the Hedgehog Grove Sheriff and/or the ZPD and fork you over." The red panda then turned his striped tail to the suspended weasel, rubbing his chin. "Now which would be less trouble?"

"No, no!" said Weaselton. "I'll do it! I'll take yer offer! Now put me down!"

"Fantastico!" said the red panda, turning back to the weasel and taking out his phone again. "I'm Mr. Bright and I'm your boss now. Welcome to the team!" Weaselton soon found himself in another unwanted embrace. "Employment selfie!"

* * *

 **THIS IS AN AU, BUT IN TEN YEARS, WHO KNOWS…?**

 _[OST-PV]_

 **NEXT TIME:**

 **Flash:** "On the…"

 **Nick:** "Carrots? What's got you down?"

 **Judy:** "Do you think I'm really that reckless?"

 **Flash:** "…next…"

 **Nick:** "I… don't feel up to answering that question."

 **Judy:** "I've just been hearing some complaints lately."

 **Flash:** "… _Zeep_ … _labor_ ;…"

 **Lee:** "I think the crux of the matter is your tunnel vision. But how to deal with that…?"

 **Flash:** "A... Life of…'"

 **Nick:** "Hang on… Maybe something will come to me."

 **Flash:** "…'Sloth'."

 **Bogo:** "No time for that now. We've got bigger problems. There's been a series of ram-raids in the Canal District and Precinct 19 wants Division 2's help."

 **Flash:** " _Target:_ …"

 **Bogo:** "Also, what's that sloth doing here?!"

 **Lee:** "Closing catchphrase, sir."

 **Flash:** "… _Locked_ …"

 **Nick:** "That's it! He's the answer to everything!"

 **Bogo:** "What."

 **Flash:** "… _On!_ "

* * *

 **Whew! Glad that's done with! Unfortunately, I'm still working on the next serial, so you may be in for a wait. Sorry...**

 **On another note, once I get the time, I'm considering completely rewriting "The Right Staff" and "Robin of Foxley".**


	20. The Virtue of Sloth – Part I

**Well, here we are. It only took almost a year… I'm not sure I have an excuse for this delay. I'll just say that I'll _try_ to get through the next one quickly. I just hope you readers are still around for this!**

 **A _big_ thank-you to J Shute, LordKraus, and ubernoner for beta reading this beast, and to the good folks at the Zootopia Author's Association Discord server for giving me the encouragement to sit my butt down and actually _write_ something.**

 **I hope you enjoy this!**

* * *

 **BACKGROUND MUSIC:**

1) Kenji Kawai – "MEMORY" – from Mobile Suit Gundam 00

* * *

In the short time she'd been working at SV2, Judy had found that days off were few and far-between. Usually this didn't bother her, partly because she wanted to devote as much time as possible to her job, and partly because actual deployments only came so often. Most of her time 'at work' was either doing Animazon-Rule required repair work, or doing paperwork in the Ready Room.

Still, Judy was glad to have today off. It felt like the grey bunny hadn't seen enough of the actual city. It had been months since she'd left Bunnyburrow and she still felt like a tourist.

In fact, right now Judy was reading a tourist booklet as she made her way through town. She'd figured she might as well get her parents' minds off all the danger she was in as a Zeeplabor Forward by sending them selfies in front of Zootopia's major landmarks. Just her luck they'd seen meme of Unit 2 getting clonked with a dome panel! Frith only knew what they'd have thought if they'd gotten footage of Hylander getting his Labor decapitated by that bridge…

Anyway, Judy had decided to start her 'tour' in Sahara Square, near the Oasis Hotel, then work her way across Downtown to Savanna Central, maybe taking in the Rainforest District or the Meadowlands if she had time.

Located in the heart of Savanna Central and ringed by streetcar tracks, Aquavitae Plaza had easily become Judy's favorite sight to see. Surrounding the Plaza were the tall, hoof-shaped City Hall, the art nouveau Natural History Museum, the organic-gothic Central Library, and of course, the imposing Zootopia Police Department Headquarters.

The bunny had to admit she felt lost in the big city, and having to weave her way between larger mammals didn't help at all. The idea of taking Robin with her popped into her mind. If nothing else, it'd look funny seeing a giant Labor act like a lost turista.

Judy was still giggling at the mental image as she walked out of Aquavitae Plaza. Then, she looked ahead of her and saw a giant, flat object ambling down the street, with a thick tail dragging along the ground behind it. Judy's pace was faster even at walking speed, so she came close enough to find that the odd sight was an otter, groaning under the weight of an enormous book. Obviously the book had been bound with larger animals in mind.

"Excuse me?" Judy asked. "Can I help you with that?"

The book dipped briefly as the otter nodded. "Please."

Judy moved to the tail-end of the book and held it up as the otter swung around so she could see the rabbit, allowing Judy a better view of her.

"Thank you," sighed the green-eyed, purple coat-wearing otter.

Judy glanced at the book and shook her head. "I'm surprised there isn't a smaller edition."

"There isn't; this is the only copy in the library system," said the otter. "Normally my husband picks these up, but he's dealing with a client and I offered to pick it up for him." The otter shook her head. "I've seen him carry big books like this home before, but now I'm wondering if I should drag him to the nearest chiropractor."

Judy chuckled.

"Sorry to bother you with this," said the otter.

"Oh no. It's no bother," Judy assured as they carried the book down the street. "I've got nothing better to do anyway." Judy's eyes travelled over the book again, taking in its aged cover and the gold-embossed words, A Natural History of Toxic and Hallucinogenic Irises. "Are you into flowers?"

"No, my husband is," said the otter. "It's part of his job."

"Is he a botanist?"

"No, a florist."

"Ah…" Judy smiled. "I'm from the Tri-Burrows myself. You gotta know your plant husbandry out there. So, where are you taking this?"

"Oh, my husband's shop. It's just a couple blocks away."

The walk was indeed rather short as the two smaller mammals weaved their way around larger ones, occasionally chatting about flowers. Eventually, they reached a narrow street – narrow, at least, by the standards of elephants and other megafauna. To Judy, it was about the same width you'd see in central Bunnyburrow, albeit with much taller buildings on ether side. Not surprisingly, most of the mammals Judy saw in this street were smaller ones – no bigger than a wolf or so – even though the shop entrances were still 'omniscaled' – built to a standard so all species could conceivably enter.

Judy and the otter made their way to one such shop – "Blooming Savanna," read the logo on the awning. Judy caught a sign in the window saying "Fiona's Flora," and with slightly different hours than what was in the other window. The rabbit's nose twitched; why would a flower shop have two names and two sets of hours?

"Uh, Fiona, is it?"

"What?" The otter looked back. "Oh no, it's Lily – Lily Otterton."

"Oh…" Judy was even more confused as they passed through the door. Behind the counter stood an elderly reindeer.

"This is Fiona," said the otter, gesturing to the reindeer. "Hello!"

"Oh hi, Lily," said the doe. "Still no sign of Emmet?"

"No, he's busy with a regular – a rich one," said Lily. "Emmet says this one's planning for a wedding and he's rather particular."

"Ah…" The reindeer nodded.

"Uh, where do you want it?" said Judy.

"Oh, right behind the counter is fine," said Lily, and they guided the book around the counter, laying it by Fiona's pedal hooves.

The otter sighed as she straightened her back. "I can't thank you enough, Miss…?"

"Oh, Judy," said Judy, extending her hand. "Judy Hopps."

"Judy…" Lily accepted the handshake. "Thank you."

"No problem." Judy remembered the second sign. "I've been meaning to ask, what's with that sign in the window?"

"Oh, Fiona's moved her business here while she finds a permanent home," said Lily. "Her shop got damaged by those rampaging Labors on Okavango Road."

A chill ran down to Judy's tail.

"I can't thank Lily and her husband enough for letting me stay here," said Fiona, smiling down at the otter.

"How goes the search?" said Lily.

"I found two possible sites," said Fiona, idly waving a hoof. "One's here in Savanna, but it's a bit close to Bisondale for my liking. The other's in the Rainforest District. It's hard to get an affordable place for a shop close to the Market Axis these days. I'll just keep looking and if I can't find anywhere better, I'll go with one of those two."

"Okay," said Lily, shaking her head. "Still, the times we live in… having to worry about rampaging giant robots…!"

"Well, it's a good thing we have Zeeplabors then," said Judy.

"That's what I thought, too," said Fiona. "Only thing is, they're just as bad if what happened to my shop is any indication."

"Amen to that," sighed Lily. "You'd think the police would be more careful. I'm surprised no one's been killed yet."

"Only a matter of time before her impetuousness has lethal consequences."

"Is something wrong?" Lily said abruptly.

"No, nothing's wrong…" Judy shook her head, trying to get her stamping foot under control.

"Oh, that's right, you're from the Burrows," said Lily, putting a warm paw on Judy's shoulder. "I'm guessing there aren't that many Labors out there – this must be a lot to process. Lord knows it is for me, and I've lived in Zootopia my whole life."

"Oh, th-there's a few farming Labors here and there," said Judy. "A-anyway, I'm sure the police are doing their best."

* * *

"I know I've asked this before, but am I really that bad?" Judy turned to her co-workers, her legs dangling off the kitchenette counter.

The rest of SV2 stiffened at their desks.

Clawhauser glanced from side to side, a spoonful of Lucky Chomps still in his mouth.

Beaverbrook buried his nose in An Illustrated History of Semaphore.

Hylander coughed, adjusted his glasses, and stared out the window. Nick soon joined him.

Judy pushed herself off the counter, landing with a thud. "You guys…!"

Lee looked around the room, sighed, and set down her copy of Barke's All the World's Labors on the desk in front of her. "Since no one else wants to mention it, you've been acting reckless since this Division was formed, and it's given the public a bad perception of us and of SV2 as a whole.

Everyone stared at Lee.

"What?" The opossum's tail twitched. "Someone had to say it."

"I could have done that, Pouchvenger," said Nick, prompting Lee to stare at him with horror – he hadn't found her Zoovenger Robo boxset, had he?!.

The fox then turned to Judy. "Fact is, Carrots, you have a bit of a tunnel vision problem."

Judy's nose twitched.

"What Wilde is saying," said Lee, with a quick, worried glance at Nick, "is that a lot of the time you become so focused on dealing with the operation's target that you don't notice when you create collateral damage."

"Well, I can't help that," said Judy, her foot beginning to stamp. "With Labor-criminals, I have to keep my eyes on the target."

"She's not psychic…" muttered Beaverbrook, before ducking his head behind his book again.

"She has a point," said Hylander, glancing momentarily from the window. "And it's not like she isn't improving."

Nick was stunned for a moment by the idea of Hylander coming to Judy's defense, but then turned back to Judy. "You started on an agricultural Labor, right? Out in the Burrows?"

"Yeah?" said Judy.

"Well, that's part of the answer right there," said Nick, turning to Lee.

Lee's brows rose. "I see…"

"I get it!" said Clawhauser, raising his spoon triumphantly. Then he tilted it back down. "What do I get?"

"Agro-Labors often require laser-like focus on the crops you're working on," said Lee. "And Hopps was working out in the Tri-Burrows, so…"

"So she had more room to stumble around," Beaverbrook realized.

"I didn't stumble around!" said Judy, scowling at the floor. "Not after the first two times, at least…"

"You know what we mean, Carrots," said Nick. "It means you're not used to tight spaces with more things to damage."

"So, multitasking's our main problem," said Lee. "I think Captain Bogo had the right idea when we had that sparring match with the barrels. Maybe we could try that again?"

"Uh…" Judy's ears drooped.

"Against Hylander," Lee hastily added, prompting a sigh from Judy and Nick. "Or maybe just regular training simulations."

"Those sims are made to test things like reaction time and accuracy," said Nick. "They're still working on decent programs for things like avoiding objects."

"You'd think they'd have done that by now," said Beaverbrook.

Lee shrugged. "They're trying, but each Labor's different; those sims were made for older Labors like the Tigersyo or Python. They're still catching up to the Ingrowl – remember, it's not fully in production yet."

"So, it's about the movement parameters?" Hylander asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Not just that," said Lee. "Those older Labors don't have the engineering for quick reflexes; it's the hardware and the software that's too advanced. This means the only way to prep the pilot is to focus on them individually."

"So it all comes back to the psychology," said Hylander. "In that case, I'd be happy to take part in a sparring match."

"Let me stop you right there, Blunderbuss," said Nick. "Captain Buffalo-butt wasn't exactly eager to hold the last one, and that was before Carrots and Pouchvenger gave him a faceful of paint, so I'm not sure he'd be up for another one."

"That's what I'm afraid of," said Lee. "I don't suppose anyone has any other ideas for avoiding property damage when fighting?"

"Or avoiding fighting at all," said Nick. "The less either Labor's moving around, the less chance there is for them to damage something."

"Is that why you've been trying to talk pilots down?" said Lee.

"Something like that," said Nick.

"About that, Nick…" Judy sat in her chair backwards, laying her arms on the chair's back as she regarded the fox. "I've been wondering – are you a pacifist?"

"Nope, just a coward." Nick's trademark smirk wormed its way across his muzzle.

Judy's jaw hung open for a moment. Before she could say anything, Hylander cut in.

"How can you sound so smug about that?!" the hyrax snapped.

Nick shrugged. "Cowards live longer; that's a fact of life."

"Police can't be cowards," snarled Hylander, his brow furrowing. "We're supposed to be bold – disciplined! You can't just make light of that!"

"H-Hylander…" Beaverbrook murmured as Hylander got out of his chair and stomped over to Nick.

"'Trust, Integrity, Bravery;' those aren't just words on our badges!" The hyrax grabbed Nick by the chest of his shirt. Nick's mouth hung open in surprise.

"If you can't understand that, you should just take off that badge and get out of here!" Hylander hissed. "Gah! It was naïve of me to think a fox could-"

"QUIT IT!" A voice shook the entire room. Everyone now stared at Beaverbrook, who covered his mouth, startled at his own outburst.

Hylander stared a bit longer, then let Nick go. "Discipline, Howard," he muttered, before turning to Lee and standing to attention. "I apologize for that, Lieutenant Fox-ape; I lost my composure. I assure you this will not happen again, but you may take whatever disciplinary action you see fit."

Lee's brow furrowed. "It's not me you need to apologize to."

"No, no," said Nick, raising his hands, his usual smile returning to his muzzle. "I'm not making a complaint. Right now I figure we all want to forget this and get on with our day, so let's just go and do that."

[OST]

Nick went to the door. "I'll be out fishing if anyone needs me."

As the fox left, Judy glanced at Hylander, who stared at the door, his mouth hanging open. Then he studied the floor, fists and teeth clenched, muttering, "Dignitas et ingenium et muneris, Howard…" or something like that.

Judy then ran out of the room, taking a while to look for Nick before catching him toting his fishing pole and folded lounge chair out the hangar door.

"Nick, are you alright?" she asked.

"'Course I am, Carrots." The fox was still smiling, but he didn't turn to look at Judy.

"You should file a complaint, Nick," said Judy.

"Nah, it'd just be a hassle for us both," said Nick, continuing out the door. "Besides, we'll be rid of each other soon enough."

Judy's ears drooped. "You still plan on getting kicked off the force?"

"Mmm-hm."

"Then… then why have you been helping me?" said Judy.

"Hey, if you get kicked off first, they'll be less willing to let me go; they're short on qualified mammals, remember?"

Judy stopped walking as her jaw dropped, before running to catch up with Nick again.

"But-"

"Don't take this the wrong way, Carrots." Nick flashed Judy a quick grin. "You've still got a future here if you work at it. Don't let a crook like me get in the way."

Judy stopped again, watching the fox disappear into the overgrown weeds.


	21. The Virtue of Sloth – Part II

**BACKGROUND MUSIC:**

1) Micheal Giacchino - "Work Slowly and Carry a Big Schtick" - from _Zootopia_

2) Micheal Giacchino - "Work Slowly and Carry a Big Schtick (Expanded version)" - from _Zootopia_

* * *

"What the fuzz, Nick?!" Finnick grumbled behind the wheel of his van. "You said the line was gonna be shorter at the drive-thru."

"It _was_ earlier," said Nick, shaking his head at the SUV in front of them. Through the rear windshield of the SUV, Nick could see a pair of hippos making exasperated gestures as the driver as the driver joined Finnick and numerous others in the chorus of blaring horns.

"Quit it," said Nick, turning to the other fox. "That's not helping."

Finnick just snorted. "I told ya we shoulda gone to BugBurga. At least their soft-server machines _work_."

"You _know_ C&W's got the better burgers, buddy," said Nick.

"Agree t' disagree," huffed Finnick, glowering at the line of cars ahead. "Anyway, why're you so quiet today?"

"Quiet how?"

Finnick didn't take his eyes off the SUV. "Usually y' talkin' about how cussfuzzin' insane y' co-workers are; 'Pouchvenger did this,' 'Buffalo-butt did that,' 'Carrots did everything in between'… Only now you ain't said a word 'bout how today went."

Nick just stared out the window.

"Hey, talk t' me Nick," said Finnick, turning to his passenger.

"It doesn't matter," muttered Nick. "At least it _won't_ once I get out of there."

"Still think yo' plan's crazy," grumbled Finnick. "Even fo' you."

"Well, that's me," said Nick. "I make crazy work."

Before Finnick could retort, he was greeted with another chorus of honks from in front. "Fo' the love of- What the fuzz is goin' on up there?!"

"Hang on, I'll check." Nick promptly hopped out the door and walked past the three cars in line ahead before encountering a sleek red sports car with the vanity plate 'FST NSL' positioned at the speaker/microphone stand. Leaning out the car's window was a sloth trying to communicate his order to the increasingly exasperated voice coming from the speaker.

"…and a…double… tall…"

 _"Sir?"_ growled the speaker.

"…smooth…roast… decaf… coffee… extra… hot… extra… foam…"

" _Will_ that _be all, sir?!"_

"…no… ice."

 _"Is_ that _it?"_

"Make… sure… it's… a … _large_ … onion rings."

 _"I_ got _the large onion rings,"_ growled the female voice at the other end. From the slight braying in her voice, it must have been a caprid.

Nick smiled at he recognized the sloth. Only _he_ would drive a car like that. "Flash, Flash, hundred-yard dash!"

Gordon 'Flash' Slothmore slowly turned to Nick. "Niiiiiiick…!"

 _"Great, another one,"_ grumbled the speaker.

"It's been ages, buddy," said Nick. "How've ya been? Wait, hold that thought."

 _"At least this guy talks normal,"_ muttered the caprid.

Nick turned to the microphone. "Just get this guy a double-double-veggie burger, no tomatoes, extra lettuce, large onion rings, smooth roast decaf coffee, extra hot, extra foam, and an apple turnover for dessert." The fox turned back to Flash. "Same order as back in high school?"

A smile slowly wormed its way across the sloth's face. "Yeah… Nick…"

 _"Thank_ God _,"_ sighed the caprid. _"I didn't write down his order the first time because he was taking so long."_

"…you… know… me…"

A voice could be heard in the background through the speaker. _"You shouldn't have asked him to repeat it, Mauricia."_

 _"I know, I_ know _…"_ moaned the caprid. _"Stupid!"_

"I'm a… sloth… who…"

"I'm actually with the van a few cars down," said Nick. "If you like I can stay with this guy and pick up both our meals. Just tell the fennec in the van I've got his order."

"…knows… what… he… _likes_ …"

 _"You got it. You're a lifesaver,"_ said the caprid. _"You're having_ _…?"_

"So… how have… you…"

"Double goat-cheese cricketburger with large fries and a cub sod for me, and a kiddie mealwormburger with apple juice for my colleague in the van – don't forget the toy."

"…been doing…"

 _"Alrighty then. Proceed to the second window."_

"…these days?"

"Me? Been alright," said Nick, not missing a beat as he slid across Flash's hood, landed on the other side of the sports car, yanked open the passenger-side door, and got into the car beside the sloth. The fox took in the car's interior; obviously a custom job.

Nick whistled. "So how 'bout you? Still the speed demon?"

Flash just gave a slow-motion smirk.

Thankfully the sloth drove much faster than he did most other things. However that proved to be a bit _too_ fast as Nick was hurled back and forth like a ragdoll as Flash's car lurched toward the checkout window, where Nick assisted Flash in picking up the bags and paying for his meal. Nick then texted Finnick to meet him and Flash in a small park a few blocks down from the C&W.

By the time Flash got out of his car, Finnick had selected a picnic table. Still, it took the sloth a while to get the twenty feet from the curb to the table. Nick was in no hurry, so he just ambled along with Flash, the drive-thru bags in hand.

"So how's the DMV treatin' ya?" said Nick as he waited for Flash to advance before he took another step.

"Things are… doing… pretty… alright… given… the… givens. …Priscilla's… doing… fine… as well."

"Glad to hear it, buddy," said Nick. "You caused quite the fracas back there."

Flash gave a barely audible tongue-click, slowly shaking his head. "The… trouble… with… mammals… these… days is… they just… don't… know… how… to wait."

"Don't I know it," chuckled Nick. Hopps would give herself a hernia if she had to have a conversation with Flash.

Flash briefly (by sloth standards) looked up and cast Nick a grin. "You… seem… patient… enough… Nick."

"Aw shucks, buddy," said Nick.

"I… mean it… Nick.… You… seem like… you've… got… things… pretty… figured… out."

"Gee Flash, I–"

"I… saw you… on… the news."

Nick's ears drooped.

"Working… with… Labors… must… be pretty… cool."

Nick hoped the sloth couldn't see his ears turning red. "Well, don't you technically work with Labors?"

"The… D… M… V… just… registers… Labors… We don't… actually… pilot… them… you know."

"Neither do I – I'm just a backup."

By now the two were halfway to the picnic table. Finnick was looking impatient.

"Still… closer… to the… action… than… me."

Nick snorted. "You say that like that's a good thing – I think I've lost five pounds from total fear since I signed on."

"Ha… ha… ha…!"

"I'm serious, Flash," said Nick. "I'd say you've got things more set than me. You're pretty laid-back, and next to me that's no mean feat."

"It's… no… big… deal," said Flash, giving a slow-motion shrug. "I'm… just… a… patient… kind of… guy."

"Seems like that's a virtue for you sloths," said Nick.

"The food even lukewarm in there?" Finnick grumbled from the table.

"Yeah.… You don't… see… sloths… stressed… out… that much.…It's… like… Zen… I guess."

"Zen?"

Another slow-motion shrug. "Maybe… not.… I don't… know.… Either way… I like… to think… us… sloths… are… just… plain…"

"Would ice cubes warm it up?" Finnick growled from six-and-a-half feet away.

"… _paaaaaatieeeeent_." The three-toes sloth gave a small skir. "Lots… of… reason… to… stop… and smell… the… roses."

"Ah, fergeddit," Finnick growled, leaping from the table to grab the bags of fast food from Nick.

"As he peeked inside, the tiny fox's muzzle contorted into a snarl. "What the fuzz, Nick?! A kiddie burger?!"

* * *

In his dingy apartment – still an improvement over the bridge – Nick clambered into his undersized bed, curling up around his tail.

The fox mulled over the events of the day. Hopps certainly could take some cues from a guy like Flash. Pity she wasn't a sloth…

Nick suddenly bolted upright.

Why was it that his stupid ideas were the ones that made the most sense?!

* * *

"Just hear me out you guys," said Nick. "What if we made Carrots a sloth?"

The lithe grey rabbit and the burly hyena just stared at the fox as Judy began wiping down Robin's left leg.

Joanna Namakoro turned to Judy. "Is he alright?"

Judy just shrugged.

"I'm just saying, if we slowed you down, it might train you to look more at your surroundings."

Judy tilted her head. Joanna scratched the mane poking out from under her mechanics' cap.

"O-kaaaay…?" said Joanna. "But how are you plannin' on doin' that? Last I checked, genetic engineering ain't nothin' like the comic books."

Nick smirked. "That's where you come in, Big Wrench. Who needs genetic engineering when we've got mechanical engineering? Back when I was with Inaba, they were experimenting with power suits for mammals our size using Microlabor tech – to help small mammals with heavy lifting. What if we made a suit like that, but for slowing down movement?"

"Like some kind of workout machine?" said Judy.

"More like something that detects movement and slows it down as it happens."

Joanna raised an eyebrow. "That is _some_ level of engineering right there."

"The Ingrowls and Pythons both use motion-capture tech for intricate hand movement," said Nick. "And last I checked, you've got access to tons of spare parts."

"Yeah," the hyena snorted. "If you're building a Labor taller than an elephant."

Nick wasn't fazed. "I know mammals from junkyards and electronics stores. They can help with the tiny parts – plenty of spares for Microlabors."

Joanna shook her head again. "Still a lotta effort on my part."

"Okay…" Nick made a show of turning his back to the hyena mechanic. "I'll just let you miss out on this little bit of elbow grease and leave you to your eternity of heavy repairs on Robin whenever Carrots goes off the rails. Your call, Big Wrench."

"Hey!" Judy protested.

Before Judy could say anything more, Joanna had dashed in front of Nick, donning a toothy grin. "When do we start?"

Nick smirked.

* * *

Joanna gave it a week, but in the end it was only four days before the first of the 'sloth suits' was finished. That is, if 'finished was the right word for it; Joanna insisted on it being linked up to her computer so that she could monitor its systems.

When Judy got a look at the suit, she wondered how the hyena could possibly monitor them – it just looked like there were so many.

The sloth suit itself looked like some kind of medieval torture device. It was comprised of a rabbit-scaled wetsuit so covered in metal frames and pneumatic cylinders that it could stand up on its own. Judy felt immobile the moment she strapped the thing on. About the only things it didn't cover were her hands, feet, and head.

"Each of these pistons corresponds to a muscle," said Joanna. "If all goes well, the mo-cap nodes'll pick up your movement and trigger the moving muscles' pistons, pushing back against them just a teensy bit."

"Feels like it's resisting me already," muttered Judy.

"Uh, Judy?" said Joanna. "I haven't switched it on yet."

"Oh."

"I'm gonna turn the whole shebang on in just a sec. It it's completely holding you down or pinching you at all, let me know. I'll probably have to re-tune it anyway."

Judy nodded. "Okay…"

Joanna placed her finger on a switch just under Judy's chin. "I put the on/off switch here so you can turn it off with your chin in an emergency. I'm gonna power it on in three, two, one…!"

 _[OST2]_

 ** _CLICK_**

Almost instantly, Judy felt the suit tightening up against her, somehow pushing every muscle in. It felt like it was about to crush her completely.

Joanna must have seen the rabbit's look of discomfort as she dashed to her computer, punching in commands. "Hang on. I'll loosen 'er up."

The crushing feeling subsided, but Judy still felt… _heavy_.

"Don't try and move just yet," said Joanna, still typing away. "Okay… That should do it. Let's try something simple. Try moving your arm out and forward."

Judy began to move her arm, but soon heard the pistons engaging as her movement slowed.

"I think it's working," said Nick, his expression brightening.

Just then, Judy's arm stopped moving halfway through the gesture.

"Hmm…" Joanna resumed typing. "Was worried about this – system interpreted the slowing-down as you trying to stop the movement and it got into a feedback loop that made it stop completely. Bit of extra code and… there we go. Try reaching that arm for the ceiling."

Judy began raising her arm upwards. Once again, the pneumatics went into action, stopping her movement, but this time the slowdown wasn't so rapid. It wound up being fifteen seconds before Judy got her arm pointing upwards.

Joanna smiled. " _Now_ we're cookin'."

Nick nodded. "Yeah, that looked real sloth-like."

"This is so weird…" Judy muttered.

Joanna took another look at her screen and typed in a few more setting updates. "The hard part is making sure the suit follows through on movements – making sure the slow-down commands aren't getting messed up by new inputs from Judy's body. I'm not 100% sure I've got that settled, so I'd like to get as much testing out of this as possible."

The hyena looked back at Judy. "Try waving your arm – like you're waving at someone in the weeds." She gestured toward the field of weeds visible through the open hangar doors.

Judy tried to wave, but her arm jerkily moved toward her head in a stuttering motion. She began to worry about knocking herself out, but her arm never made contact.

Joanna typed in some more settings. "One good thing about these modified Labor OSs is that they learn a bit from each movement. So hopefully the more complicated movements'll get less jerky the more you use the suit. Keep waving."

Judy kept waving and sure enough, her arm's movements grew less fitful and more smooth, but still incredibly slow.

"Okay, now try flapping your arms," said Joanna, not taking her eyes off the screen.

Judy did so. At first her left arm felt as jerky as her right arm first hand, but its movements very quickly grew as her right.

From there, the testing moved to the legs. It wound up being a while before Judy could actually walk in the sloth suit, mainly because the change in momentum meant she had to change the way she walked. Joanna kept updating the suit's movement settings all throughout the exercise, eventually feeling confident enough that she unplugged the cables that ran from her computer to the suit's spinal area and shifted to wireless updates.

Still, the whole experience was painstakingly slow for Judy. As she tried to walk back and forth, she turned her head back and noticed that in just over a minute, she'd only walked about six feet forward.

"I think this is a bit much," she said.

"You kidding?" said Nick, walking up beside Judy. "I was on the track team with a sloth and you're moving like he did in the 100-yard-dash, Carrots."

Judy rolled her eyes and waited for the inevitable smirk from Nick, but it didn't come.

"Running?" said Joanna.

"Yeah," said Nick.

"Better turn it up then," said the hyena, typing into her laptop.

"Seriously?!" Judy groaned as the suit slowed down even more.

After a few horrifically belabored paces, Judy heard a voice from behind her.

"Just what the hell are you doing?" growled Captain Bogo.

Judy tried to turn her head around, bus she could only just catch the buffalo in her peripheral vision. Soon she tried turning her body around, but all she could do was see her peripherals getting clearer and clearer as the suit slowed her rotation.

"J-just a little side project, Cap'n," Joanna stammered.

"Side proj- _why_?!"

"It's our way of dealing with Hopps' tunnel vision," said Nick.

"Wilde, was this your idea?"

Even through her peripherals, Judy could see Nick standing there, his mouth hanging open.

"I'll take that as a yes," Bogo said. "Hopps wouldn't dream up that thing and Namakoro's too bloody sane for this."

"Uh, thank you, Cap'n?" said Joanna.

"I figured it was wither you or Camazotz, Wilde – and since Camazotz hasn't told me anything-"

"You called?"

A chill ran down Judy's spine as the oddly light form of a spectral bat alighted on top of her head.

"Were you watching us?" said Judy, her teeth clenched in fright.

"Only the good parts," said Chief Mechanic Camazotz, giving Judy an even bigger scare by tilting her head down over the rabbit's face to look her in the eye. By now, Judy had learned that whenever Camazotz gave that toothy, fanged grin, it meant she should be afraid – _very_ afraid.

"I can handle my own officers, Lucy," Bogo huffed.

"True, but seeing one of my mechanics spend so much time and effort on this thing…" The bat gestured down to Judy's legs. "You should'a put those actuators on the _back_ of the legs by the way."

"D'oh!" grunted Joanna, bringing a paw to her head. "I _knew_ something was up with that!"

"Thought I taught ya better than that, Joanna," Camazotz chuckled. "Anyway, seeing so many parts going into this thing made me morbidly curious how it was gonna turn out. Gotta say, I wasn't disappointed."

"I'll let you know when our act hits primetime," Nick muttered before turning to Bogo. "Seriously though, Captain. We're trying to help Hopps out here. You're the one that's always on our case about property damage."

Camazotz used one of her wings to grab onto Judy's ears, whispering into it. "This'll be good."

Bogo loomed over Nick as he gestured to the sloth suit. "How does putting her in this… this… cyberpunk BDSM cosplay help her with that?!"

Nick rubbed his chin as he turned to Judy. "There a market for that?"

"Focus, Wilde!" Bogo bellowed.

"Okay basically," said Nick. "It's to try and get Hopps to slow down a bit – get her to watch the situation more."

"You could have done a few rounds of Kim's Game – or anything else that didn't hold our mechanics hostage," growled Bogo.

"Kim's Game?" said Joanna.

"Oh, I know that!" said Judy, her expression brightening. "We played it in Bunny Scouts. Basically we–"

"I wasn't talking to you, Hopps!" said Bogo.

"Always figured Bogo was an ex-Junior Ranger Scout," Camazotz whispered into Judy's ear.

"Kim's Game wouldn't work with multitasking," Wilde replied. "She just won't have time for that in a fight. This is basically like those metal training rings baseball players put on their bats. I figured it was either this or another sparring match like she had with Pouchvenger."

Bogo's teeth clenched at the mention of the sparring match.

"Bogo?" Camazotz finally flew off of Judy's head. "A word?"

The bull and the bat made their way toward Camazotz's office. Judy, Nick, and Joanna just stood there wondering what was going to come next.

After a few minutes, Bogo stepped out, rubbing his head with his hoof and clenching his teeth. "Wilde, get Hopps out of that thing. I don't want to see her in it again without my say-so. Namakoro, Camazotz wants a word."

Joanna gulped and sauntered off to the office as Judy clambered out of the sloth suit.

That would be the last Judy or Nick saw of the hyena for a week.


	22. The Virtue of Sloth – Part III

**BACKGROUND MUSIC:  
**

1) Toshihiko Sahashi – "Procrastination" – from The Big O

2) Toshihiko Sahashi – "Perverse" – from The Big O

* * *

That next week wound up being rather dull. The nutty weather had gone away, and outrage over the tax hike had subsided, so the only deployment had to make turned out to be a false alarm – of sorts.

Apparently a possibly senile ox hadn't gotten the memo that his favorite department store was slated for the wrecking ball. It wasn't until Hylander and Judy drew their weapons on the Bullfrog assisting the demolition that the ZPD realized what had happened. The hapless badger piloting the Bullfrog had been scared out of his wits, but no real damage was done other than a knocked-over fire hydrant and some unplanned assistance in tearing down the building.

No further news of Joanna or the sloth suits came during that time. Everyone in Division 2 (except Judy oddly enough) tossed around a few more ideas every now and then, but nothing ever came of them.

However, at the end of that week, Captain Bogo called all of his Division down to the hangar, where they lined up beside one of the carriers. Behind Bogo, Camazotz's mechanics were carrying several objects toward them on carts.

"Before I say anything more, let me make one thing clear," said the Cape buffalo. "This was _not_ my idea. But Chief Mechanic Camazotz seems to think this'll get it into your heads that your Labors aren't toys, so I'll indulge her – if only to see if it works."

Camazotz herself then landed on the floor in front of Bogo. "These 'sloth suits' are designed to slow your movements," she explained. "The basic concept is that slowing your movements'll get ya to look before ya leap. Now both Forwards will be wearing these suits to see what happens, and since Backups have to be in sync with their Forwards, they'll be wearing them too."

Lee and Hylander grimaced. Nick glared at Judy, who just started in horror at the now mass-produced contraptions.

"Ah, don't be so modest, Wilde," Camazotz gave her 'serial killer grin.' "This was your idea, after all."

Now everyone glared at Nick.

* * *

 _[OST1]_

"Can we all just agree that Hopps sucks us into weird situations?" said Nick, taking a very long time to raise his paw.

Judy tried to bury her head in her hands, but her suit prevented her hands from reaching her head in time.

"This was _your_ idea, Wilde," snarled Hylander, sitting at his desk, trying to crane his neck to see Nick.

"Yeah…" Now Nick tried to cover his face with his hand, but his suit delayed that reaction as well.

Judy turned her head to face Lee's desk just as her hands touched her cheek. Since putting on her suit and returning to the Ready Room, the opossum had been eerily still as she sat at her desk. Judy couldn't tell if it was because of the suit or if she was just being that still. The fact that she was so quiet implied the latter.

"Lee?" Judy said, trying to shift herself out of the chair.

"Shh!" That was Beaverbrook, the only small mammal in Division 2 not wearing a sloth suit. "She's meditating."

Judy craned her neck to look at Lee before the rabbit and her suit landed on the floor with a 'clank.' Sure enough, Lee's eyes were closed.

"Why's she doing that?" Nick whispered.

"She told me it's her way of getting through the day without the suit bugging her," said Beaverbrook.

Nick and Judy began to amble their suit-delayed way towards Lee. It wound up being a minute before they made it to the other side of the room.

The opossum was as still as a statue as she faced the wall.

"Think I should hold a mirror in front of her to see if she's breathing?" said Nick, earning the fox a "SHHH!" from Judy and Beaverbrook.

As if to answer the fox's question, Judy's long, sensitive ears picked up the soft, steady sounds of breathing from Lee's chest.

"Wow," Judy muttered. "She's good."

" _I_ need to learn how to do-" Nick was interrupted by a deep rumbling coming from Lee's mouth.

"Was that a snore?" muttered the fox.

Judy scowled. "She's not meditating – she's napping!"

" **VENGER BEEEEEEEEAAAAM!** "

The sudden shout from the opossum caused Beaverbrook to jump back into Judy, knocking them both over as Lee opened her eyes and took in her co-workers staring at her.

"Sorry," Lee said, yawning. "Must have fallen asleep. It's my first time actually meditating."

Judy wasn't sure whether to believe that or not as Beaverbrook hefted the combined bulk of the bunny and her sloth suit to her feet.

Lee's tail thrashed as she tried to turn her swivel chair around. "Honestly I have my doubts about this exercise."

"Just now?" Judy grumbled as she tried to adjust her footing so that it didn't resemble that of a badly posed action figure.

"You know what I mean," said Lee. "All we're doing is messing around with these suits. It's amusing, but I'm not seeing any real progression in our skills. I still think we should have gone with another sparring match using Bogo's rules. Then we could tell what works and what doesn't."

Nick's brows shot up. "Oh god."

"What?" said Judy.

"I just had another stupid idea."

* * *

An hour-and-a-half later (much of it spent getting the four sloth-suited mammals down the stairs), Division 2 was looking over an octagon marked in green masking tape on the hangar floor, with pop cans and water bottles placed randomly all over it.

"All things considered, I see your logic, Wilde," said Lee. "When you think about it, these suits are somewhat like Labors, so doing a scaled-down version of the barrel fight makes sense."

"Still not sure this'll work," said Nick, wishing he could reach up to scratch the itch developing between his ears. "But it's worth a try."

"So who goes first?" said Beaverbrook.

"I will," said Judy, eager to pass the time in Nick's walking torture chamber somehow.

"And me," said Hylander, earning a sigh of relief from Lee.

After Beaverbook put Judy and Hylander's crash helmets on for them, the rabbit and the hyrax were set on opposite sides of the octagon.

"I'll _try_ to go easy on you, Hopps, but no promises." said Hylander, an odious smile on his muzzle. "I take no pleasure hurting a lady."

Judy returned the grin. "Feeling's mutual."

Nick looked from one to the other of the Forwards. "Alright, three, two, one, _go_!"

 _[OST2]_

No sooner had Nick uttered the word 'go' than everyone knew what would happen next as Judy and Hylander strained their suits' systems trying to dash at each other. The combatants found themselves gritting their teeth as they tried to overcome their restraints. After a few moments, Judy felt like she'd lost three pounds since the match started.

"Wait! Hopps! Hopps! Hopps!" Beaverbrook yelled.

Too late, Judy heard a noise next to her foot. She craned her neck down to notice that her foot was touching one of the empty water bottles.

"Does that count as a penalty?" said Nick.

"She didn't knock it over," said Clawhauser. "Just nudged it a bit."

Lee frowned. "I think it is. Bogo's rules mentioned touching the barrels counted as a penalty if I remember rightly."

"So that's a penalty right out the gate for Carrots," Nick sighed.

Suddenly there was a scream as Hylander fell face-first, crushing a soda can under the brow of his crash helmet.

Nick rolled his eyes. "…and one for Blunderbuss."

"This blasted contraption took too long to adjust my footing," grumbled Hylander, somehow perfectly balanced between one of his feet and the can under his helmet.

Lee tried – and failed – to bring her hand to her muzzle in thought. "Come to think of it, you sometimes have trouble balancing Unit 2 properly in close-quarters."

"Hey, this _was_ a good idea," said Clawhauser, grinning.

"So Carrots needs to work on her awareness, and Blunderbuss needs to work on his posture," said Nick.

"I'll have you know, Wilde, that- _ah!_ " Hylander tried to push himself up, but the change in weight distribution was faster than his slowed-down reflexes, and he fell on his side, knocking over a bottle in the process.

Clawhauser scratched his head. "Is _that_ a penalty?"

Lee's eyebrow twitched. "Let's reset the stage and try again. Clawhauser, get Hylander back on his feet."

As Clawhauser helped the hyrax up, Beaverbrook stepped in and righted the water bottle Hylander had knocked over.

"I just realized something," said Nick. "A 'pin' would probably take a minute at least in these suits."

"That's a good point," said Lee.

"What about tagging them out?" suggested Clawhauser.

Lee considered it, but shook her head. "It'd have to be a certain area of the suit – like the back. It depends on where the Labors' batteries are."

"I've got it," said Beaverbrook, running off, then coming back with a roll of masking tape. The beaver tore off two long strips, folding their sticky sides in on themselves while leaving a small bit of adhesive exposed, then attached one of them each on the backs of Judy and Hylander's sloth suits.

"Like flag football," said Beaverbrook. "You pull the tape off and you win."

Lee thought about it. "Not ideal, but I can't think of anything better, so let's try it out."

This time, Judy and Hylander met with better luck, but the fight still dragged on much longer than either of them would have liked. Both of them were more careful to avoid the bottles and cans, but that only made the match even slower. From whenever she glanced at the sidelines, Judy could swear she saw Nick nodding off.

Still, when the two finally made contact after three minutes, it felt odd for Judy to see her and Hylander's moves in slow motion. Anticipating each other felt hard, mainly because even they didn't know how to make a move themselves with the sloth suits fighting back.

Eventually, the first penalty came after the first ten minutes when Hylander exposed his back to Judy. Judy reached out for the tape, but she found herself falling over onto two cans when her fingers were less than half an inch from their target.

"At least now we know what we're doing," Nick muttered to Lee before turning back to the octagon. "Remember, Blunderbuss, penalties count against both of you."

Both Judy and Hylander groaned as Clawhauser tiptoed into the octagon to set Judy upright again, stopping only to right a bottle the cheetah had knocked over with his tail.

The match continued, with Hylander earning the second penalty of the match when knocking over a bottle while adjusting his footing. By this point, the bout had lasted almost forty minutes. Beaverbrook had returned to his copy of _Karl Barx: Greatness and Illusion_ by the sidelines. Clawhauser had stepped out to help restock Ready Room 2's fridge, then came back. Two officers of Division 1 and a handful of morbidly fascinated mechanics stopped by every now and again to ask how the slow-motion sparring session was progressing – sometimes staying a short while to see if anything actually happened – then continued on their way.

For the combatants themselves, it was hard to tell if they should be bored or energized, unsure if the sloth suits would outright stop them if they kept moving. Under the suits, their fur began to mat as their bodies heated up from exertion.

Finally, the match seemed about to end when Judy left her back open for a split-ten-minutes, allowing Hylander to reach for her tape strip.

But then Nick craned his head forward and called out "Time."

"What?" said Hylander.

"Our shift's over. We get to go home now," said Nick.

Judy and Hylander's jaws dropped. Judy wasn't sure if this was good news or bad, but she didn't protest as her sloth suit was switched off and stepped out.

"I feel like I've been put in fast-forward," muttered Hylander as he got out of his own suit. Judy felt jittery as well as she took her first free steps since putting the contraption on.

* * *

Judy was still mulling over the day of sloth-suited misery when she got home. It felt like just about all of her fights since joining Division 2 left her dissatisfied – with the possible exception of that Bullfrog at the paint factory, and even that had been followed up with countless buckets of paint thinner. Still, the bizarre events of the octagon were better than what had happened at Okavango Road at any rate.

The sound of Judy's MuzzleTime ringtone interrupted her pondering.

The rabbit put on her best Cheshire Cat face. "Oh hi! It's my parents!"

"Hey there, Jude-the-Dude," said Stu Hopps, his expression chipper. Bonnie Hopps stood next to him. "Things going okay in the big city?"

"So far, so good," said Judy. "Not much happening lately." That's right – get their minds off her job…

Still, Judy wasn't sure whether to be mad or glad when her parents sighed on the other end.

From there, the conversation was pretty much standard for these calls.

"You eating well?"

"Yes."

"You getting along well with the others?"

"Yes."

"Nothing broken?"

"No."

"Find any nice bucks in the city?"

"No."

"The city everything you hoped?"

"Sure."

Then came a curveball. "Your father and I have some news for you," said Bonnie.

"Oh?" Usually when her parents adopted this tone of voice, it meant Judy was going to get another litter of nieces and nephews – or more rearely these days, of brothers and sisters.

"I may be cutting a deal with Camelty Organic Foods soon," said Stu. "So I'm coming down to Zootopia to seal the deal in a couple weeks and we thought, why not come 'round and see how you were doing?"

"Oh!" Judy smiled.

"Yeah," said Bonnie. "We haven't been in the city for a while, so you'll have to give us the grand tour."

Judy made a mental note to plan tour routes – ideally as far away from SV2 as possible.

* * *

The next day brought another few painful hours in the sloth suits for Division 2's Forwards and Backups. This time the match was more of a success, and it went better for Judy to boot; while she scored incurred both of the match's two penalties, she just barely managed to snag the tape off Hylander's back.

After the match, no one was up for Round 2, and it had been almost four hours already, so the four sloth-suited officers made their agonizing way back up to Ready Room 2.

No sooner had they all made it there than an announcement came over the PA system.

 _"Now hear this. Now hear this. All Division 2 Officers are to report to the Captains' office. All Division 2 Officers to the Captains' office."_

The suited Officers groaned before another announcement rang out.

 _"And yes, you can take those contraptions off first."_

The next sound from Division 2 was a sigh of relief.

* * *

After Division 2 had gotten their suits off, they lined up in the Captains' office in front of Captain Bogo.

"Over the last three weeks, four businesses in the Canal District have been hit with ram-raids," said the buffalo.

"Ram-raids, sir?" said Beaverbrook. "I thought half the Canal District banned cars and trucks."

"Who said anything about cars and trucks?" said Bogo, brandishing a file. "According to CCTV footage and forensic evidence, the 'ramming' was done by a Labor – yes, _a_ Labor. Precinct 19 thinks this was the work of one gang with one Labor. Either way, it's a job for us now, so the City's sending barges to get our Ingrowls around the District. Still, we're giving your machines some quick waterproofing before we ship out. The barges arrive in four hours; I want you ready to load up our Labors by then. Dismissed."

* * *

Several hours later, Division 2 was riding two City Maintenance motor-barges northward up Big Bayou Bay. The barges were rusted hulks, obviously used to carrying Labors for underwater maintenance. They were both catamarans with platforms between the hulls that acted like a Labor-carrier's payload bay; only instead of tilting upward, they tipped down into the water. Bogo had ordered that the Ingrowls be covered with tarpaulins to avoid attracting attention lest the ram-raiders pack up and scatter.

The crew of the barges hardly said a word to the officers, except a note before they departed Sv2 that the Zeeplabors were _not_ the most unusual cargo they'd carried. Judy had tried to ask what their most unusual cargo had been, but the engine of the barge had started up at that moment, and the sea otter she'd been talking to was drowned out by the din. Judy didn't bother repeating the question. Frith almighty, it was a miracle that otter wasn't deaf from working near that engine for so long.

The rest of the journey to the Canal District passed uneventfully, but Judy was able to get a good view of northeast Savanna Central. Most of it was more docks and warehouses – even a container port. Then the barges passed Jean Bisondale International Airport. Judy had to shield her ears as an airliner passed over them to come in for a landing. Finally, they proceeded past the quiet, wooded outskirts of the Canal District. Some of the shore was filled with small-to-medium size buildings atop wooden or concrete pillars. Houseboats were also moored at various points.

The barges turned into one of the inlets of the Angel River Delta until they reached the actual canals, where the buildings became larger. Here and there, they passed a hippopotamus wading by, sometimes with a chain of baskets in tow. The waterways were also increasingly choked with boats of various shapes and sizes – a ZTA Aquabus here, a Boxer on another Labor barge there, and so on.

Eventually, the two barges were moored beside a small dry-dock. From there, Division 2 was met by two ZPD officers and a hippopotamus in a Police Captain's uniform.

After alighting the barge, Captain Bogo walked up to the hippo. "Higgins," he said with a nod. "Congratulations on the promotion."

The hippo shrugged. "Eh, still doesn't feel right without ya. I'm still getting used to being back in the Canal District. Anyway, we're setting a hotel a few blocks north to accommodate your shorties. We can cover the rest at P19."

* * *

"The County Fusion Center's done just about all the heavy lifting for us," said Captain Mick Higgins as he handed Captain Bogo a cup of coffee in the hippo's sparsely decorated office at the Precinct 19 building, two aquablocks from the dry-dock. "They did a bit of networking with our boys, but that was mostly just the actual crime scene stuff. Forensics has our mystery Labor pinned down. It's a Frogmammal – the kind used for underwater cable maintenance, that sorta thing."

Higgins sighed. "'Course you probably know more about this Labor crud than me now that you're workin' with 'em and all."

"Don't give me that much credit, Higgins," Bogo snorted. "We both know I wasn't put there 'cos I was a techie."

"Sorry, sir-" Higgins broke off and grimaced. "Guess I shouldn't call you 'sir' anymore, huh?"

"You'll grow into it," said Bogo. "Anyway, Buckminster sent us out here. Wasn't too clear on what we were supposed to do, but knowing 'Bucknabster'…"

Higgins chuckled. "He still hasn't caught on?"

Bogo grunted. "If he _could_ catch on, he wouldn't act so damn proud of having the most useless position on the force. "

"Fair 'nuff," said Higgins. "Think he'll do the usual?"

"Yep," sighed Bogo. "Pass the 'buck' if we fail, 'nab' the credit if we succeed. Surprised he hasn't gone into politics yet – he'd fit right in."

"What can ya do?" said Higgins. "Anywho, I got my bullpen ready for your guys. Shall we?"

* * *

Bogo and Higgins made their way to Precinct 19's briefing room. Normally the two tables in the front row would seat five or six of Higgins' officers. Now one table had five of Bogo's subordinates perching on two chairs while Clawhauser sat on a third right next to them. A small handful of Precinct 19 Officers were seated throughout the room.

"I'll let you do the honors," chuckled Higgins.

Bogo gave a snort at his former subordinate, but he had to admit it felt good standing behind a podium again.

"Right, here's what we know," he said as Higgins turned off the lights and switched on a projector, which showed images of two smashed-in storefronts. "Over the past three weeks, four businesses in the Canal District were raided in the dead of night – two 24-hour ATMs, a jewelry store, and an antique dealer. After smashing their fronts in with a Labor, the perps walked right in, grabbed all the money and valuables they could, and ran off. At first, there was little we could find on these thieves, as the Labor made an effort to smash every camera it could, but with the jewelry store, it missed this one."

The projector now showed black-and-white footage of what looked like the rear end of a jewelry store. The tip of a three-fingered, spindly robotic arm became visible as the lights of the store went out. Then four mammals – all wearing masks – made their way across the debris, smashing the glass cabinets containing the jewels, and throwing everything they could into bulky-looking bags, and dashing back out. From the look of things, the thieves were two otters, a rather small hippo, and a very large rodent with no tail and a blunt snout.

"We don't know for certain who these thieves are," said Bogo as the camera footage came to an end. "Just that they're two otters, a capybara, a pygmy hippopotamus, and a fifth mammal piloting the Labor. Their MO seems to be that the four mammals in the footage hide somewhere while the Labor snuck up and opened a way in for them. No suspicious mammals of those species were seen in advance of these robberies, so either the Labor's pilot cased the joints beforehand, or a sixth mammal did it for them.

"Forensic evidence suggests that the same Labor was used in all four jobs," Bogo continued, as the screen shifted to an image of a Labor. "An M135 Frogmammal built by Ondatra Manufacturing – made for underwater construction work."

The Frogmammal looked like an old-fashioned diving suit for non-aquatic mammals; it had a head with multiple windows, as well as large, flat, flipper-like feet, a bulky backpack, the same spindly, three-fingered hands that had appeared in the footage.

"Canal District ZPD have been monitoring all Labors of this type going into and out of the Borough, and all those that have done so seem to have alibis for the days of the crimes," said Bogo. "Which would indicate that the Labor we want hasn't left the Canal District since at least the first job. Now, the Canal District force has been tracking down any Frogmammals that have stayed in the Borough in that time, and cross-referencing them with the city registry. So far, we're down to three suspect Labors, all belonging to local construction companies where it's the only Labor they own. All three of these companies claim their Frogmammals were with them the whole time, but their alibis either can't be verified, or could easily be faked. So someone's been telling lies."

The projector now showed a map of the Canal District with seven points marked on it – four green points for the robbery sites, and three red ones where the suspect Labors were kept.

"Trouble is," Bogo remarked. "The only way to know for sure if one these Labors did it is if we had a search warrant, and we don't have enough against them to put before a judge. Luckily, we've had a breakthrough."

The screen now showed a mugshot of a hippo. "This is Darren Potts," Bogo explained. "He's a pygmy hippo who's recently served six years for armed robbery. He was recently seen talking to a coypu that had been seen at the jewelry store and one of the ATMs shortly before they were smashed. The coypu hasn't been identified, and we haven't definitively tied Potts to any of the three construction companies, but we're not looking into the possibility that Potts is the hippo in the footage, and the coypu was casing the places for him and the rest of the gang. And what's more, their spree might not be over."

Now the projector showed the map again, this time with a yellow dot marking another location. "The coypu was seen again, loitering around another jewelry store marked here." Bogo pointed to the yellow dot. "All this indicates that four jobs weren't enough for our gang, so they're going to try again. That's where _we_ come in."

The map now showed two numbers – 1 and 2 – roughly in the middle of the map, each a few aquablocks in opposite directions from the yellow dot. "The plan is to station Units 1 and 2 in barges on Rio Mangrove here and here." Bogo pointed to the two numbers.

"You lot…" Bogo gestured to the larger Precinct 19 officers. "…will be watching the jewelry store, but some from other Precincts will also be keeping an eye out for any unusual Labor movements anywhere in the Canal District in case they've decided to try anywhere else. The moment we hear of any suspicious activity, Division 2's barges will move in and confront the Frogmammal if he shows up.

"Now then, for Division 2; the Fleabags Hotel has generously offered you accommodation while we wait for nightfall. I suggest that until this operation, you use what time you can to get some sleep. We're gonna be in for some long nights."


End file.
